


those who seek to find

by ice_connoisseur



Category: Game of Thrones (TV), Jumanji (1995)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Fic Exchange, Here be tropes, I get a trope, everybody gets a trope, yes this is a jumanji AU, yes this is all Robin Williams' fault, you get a trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25832149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_connoisseur/pseuds/ice_connoisseur
Summary: But anyway, that was how it started: Arya found the game, and Sansa rolled the dice.When you play the game of Jumanji, you win or you die.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 78
Kudos: 145
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	those who seek to find

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LibKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibKat/gifts).



> My prompter for the exchange was LibKat, who asked for found family, or friendship through the years with mutual pining. I'm not sure I've quite hit either one of those requests, plus I've somehow managed to write a fic for a j/b exchange focused almost entirely on Sansa's POV. Current me also very much regrets past-me's brainwave to do an AU with such an action-heavy film. Writing action scenes is _hard_ , folks.
> 
> Basically, LibKat, I can only apologise; in true fic style, this started off in one place and ended up somewhere else entirely, a good 10,000 words longer than anticipated. I hope you find it enjoyable all the same.
> 
> A basic familiarity with the concept of Jumanji may be helpful before reading, but hopefully isn't a complete prerequisite. 
> 
> **Disclaimer** : Some lines of dialogue and most of the rhymes are lifted or adapted from the 1995 film.

Later, Sansa tried to blame Arya for the whole thing; but for all that it was Arya who found it, Sansa was the one who rolled the damn dice. 

Jaime had intervened at that point and snapped at the pair of them to stop bickering, because it was obviously a team effort and he was damn glad for it. Brienne had scolded him for that, never mind the ridiculous grins on both girl’s faces. 

But anyway, that was how it started: Arya found the game, and Sansa rolled the dice.

* * *

Aunt Lysa was talking. Aunt Lysa was always talking; about the state of the world, about her latest fad diet, about her creepy boss and her creepy obsession with him. She never wanted to talk about Mum, or Dad, or Robb or Bran or Rickon. She never wanted to talk about anything that _mattered,_ was the problem, Sansa thought. 

Usually she talked to Robin, but since he was upstairs sulking about his doctor’s appointment she was talking to Sansa instead. She’d tried talking to Arya, too, in the early days, but Arya had glowered or walked away or, occasionally, asked about seeing Jon. Sansa at least _pretended_ to listen; mostly Arya just ignored her. It wasn’t like Aunt Lysa required much in the way of a response, so Sansa could just nod and smile and make the occasional interested sound, and that was enough. It was only polite, after all, and Sansa always felt like Mum would have wanted her to at least try to be polite. 

But it was hard, sometimes. 

Like right now. Aunt Lysa was prattling on, about the house she’d just moved them all into, about how big and grand it was, how there would be enough space for all of them. She’d done that during the viewings too, going weepy and explaining to the estate agent in hushed tones how they needed the space because she’d taken on her dead sister’s two children, never mind that there should have been _five_ of them, and the estate agent had gushed about how good she was, how generous, which was what Aunt Lysa had really been wanting. 

Just because Sansa didn’t say mean things didn’t mean she didn’t think them. 

It was setting Sansa’s teeth on edge, was all. Aunt Lysa talked and talked and talked and never said a single thing of any significance.

She was winding down now, finally getting to the point – because that was the other thing with Aunt Lysa, she never just _said_ things, she talked around them for so long you lost all interest. 

“Do you understand, Sansa dear?” she finished at last, and Sansa blinked over at her.

“You’re taking Robin to his doctor’s appointment,” she summarised. “We’re to stay here and wait for the exterminator.”

“Thank you darling, yes. There’s something awful up that chimney, I’m sure of it, and then if he’s got time could you ask him to take a look at the spare rooms? And keep an eye on him while he’s working, I don’t really trust these tradespeople.”

Sometimes Sansa couldn’t tell if Aunt Lysa genuinely forgot she was only twelve, or if she purposefully ignored that fact because it was more useful for her to pretend she was older. 

“Arya will be pleased if the spare rooms are going to be ready soon,” Sansa agreed mildly, smiling her best smile and fighting down the urge to twist it into a smirk. “It will mean Jon can finally come and visit.”

Aunt Lysa’s face sagged and Sansa swallowed the rush of petty victory. 

“Sansa…” her aunt began, but Sansa didn’t give her chance to once again avoid the subject.

“I’ll go and tell her the good news!” she said, bright and eagerly helpful, and fled the room before her aunt could say another word.

* * *

The house _was_ beautiful, she could give Aunt Lysa that much. Sansa had liked it from the first visit, despite the simpering estate agent and Aunt Lysa’s speeches. The rooms were large with high ceilings and enormous windows looking out over the overgrown gardens. They’d moved in three days before and it was already a huge improvement on Aunt Lysa’s previous house, the one they’d lived in for the eight months since the accident, with the dark, damp rooms and whistling wind that kept Sansa up at night. 

But it wasn’t home – it was bought with the money that came from _selling_ Sansa’s home, for all the Aunt Lysa seemed to have forgotten that – and it never would be.

Sansa drifted through the empty rooms, avoiding the dustsheet-covered furniture and unopened packing boxes, back to the main entrance where she climbed the wooden staircase that swept up to the first floor. A wide gallery wrapped around the centre of the house up here, looking out over the hallway below. At the far end an open doorway led to another flight of stairs, narrower and darker, and through it Sansa could hear the unmistakable sounds of Arya being where she shouldn’t.

“Aunt Lysa’s going to kill you,” she said in her best disapproving voice once she’d climbed far enough up the stairway to poke her head into the attics above and see her sister. Arya had already been firmly forbidden from exploring up here, because Aunt Lysa had not yet realised that firmly forbidding was one of the few ways to guarantee Arya _would_ do anything. Aunt Lysa, Sansa sometimes thought, was really very stupid.

Arya was covered in dust and cobwebs and surrounded by a sea of boxes. Most were still firmly shut but a good number had obviously been recently rifled through by her sister’s grimy hands.

“Don’t care,” she shrugged, and that was the thing about Arya; she genuinely _didn’t_. She said what she thought and did what she wanted and no amount of shouting or sighing was ever enough to stop her. It drove Sansa mad, mostly, but sometimes she admired it a little bit, too. Not that she'd ever let Arya know that.

“What have you found?” Sansa asked, wandering over to look despite herself. Behind the grime smeared all over her face, Arya was actually _smiling_ , smiling properly in a way Sansa hadn’t seen in the eight months since their parents had driven off with the boys in the back seats and none of them had come home again. 

“All sorts,” confirmed Arya, triumphant. “It’s like they just chucked a load of stuff up here and forgot about it.” She gestured at some of the nearby boxes. “Those ones are mostly clothes, but in these ones there’s books and trophies and pictures. Look!”

She thrust a frame into Sansa’s hands: a group of teenagers dressed in football kit with hairstyles that had probably been stylish several decades before grinned out at her. 

“Who do you think they are?” Sansa wondered aloud.

“Dunno,” shrugged Arya, unconcerned. “These boxes are all teenage boy things. There’s older stuff further back, too. I found a trombone, Sansa. A _trombone.”_

“Ha,” nodded Sansa obligingly, her concentration still on the boxes nearest to them. They were staked haphazardly, unlabelled, like someone had thrown them together in a rush. They reminded Sansa of the boxes of things they’d packed up for Robb, for Bran and Rickon, the ones now stowed safely in Uncle Benjen’s garage with Jon to look after them. “Hey, Arya, what was the story the plumber was telling you yesterday?”

“About the missing kid?” blinked Arya, pausing halfway through opening the next box. “I thought you didn’t want to hear it.”

“I’m asking now,” Sansa pointed out snappily, and Arya’s delight in sharing a creepy story obviously won out over her desire to annoy Sansa, because after a moment she said,

“Jaime Lannister, he lived here twenty years ago, and one night he just disappeared. His dad was the mayor, or a councilman, or something important anyway, but he had a temper, apparently, so loads of people figured he’d killed him. Or there was something about a jealous girlfriend, too. The police never found a body though, and the plumber said the dad never moved out of this house until he died. So probably he did the murder and then chopped the body up into tiny pieces and hid him here. Hey, you reckon this is his stuff?!”

Sansa nodded uncertainly, glancing around - there was no sign of hidden body parts, but then that was probably the point of hiding them – and back down into the box before her. The bottom of it was littered with crumpled bits of paper; the detritus from a noticeboard, if the pinholes in the corners were anything to go by. Junk, mostly, but it had all be saved and kept rather than thrown away. There was another photo, half hidden amongst the scrapes: a selfie of a pair of teenagers, a handsome boy and an awkward-looking girl with a crooked nose. From the angle it was probably the boy who had taken the picture. He had a nice smile, she thought. 

“Cool,” Arya was muttering happily, because Arya had been a little morbid even before the rest of their family had died in a fiery car crash and now she was unbearable. “I wonder if there’s any of him in these boxes.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Sansa sniffed, but she eyed the boxes with renewed distrust. In the distance she heard the slam of the front door, and going over to the window, she peered through to see Aunt Lysa leading Robin down the path to the car. She was holding his hand again; Rickon hadn’t held hands except on really busy streets for years, and he was half Robin’s age. Had been half Robin’s age. Robin kept getting older now, Sansa supposed, and Rickon was left behind. 

She wondered if Aunt Lysa had looked for them to say goodbye before she left. Probably not. Not that it mattered.

Behind her Arya let out a pleased “ah” of discovery, and Sansa shook herself out of her self-pitying thoughts to turn back to her sister.

“What have you found?” she asked, despite herself. It was always dangerous to show too much interest in Arya’s discoveries; it was just as likely to be a dead rat as an empty bird nest.

“I think it’s a treasure box,” Arya said excitedly, pulling it out and putting it on the floor between them.

Sansa reached out to stroke the smooth carvings that decorated the top. “Jumanji,” she read. “It’s beautiful.” 

It _was_ beautiful. The box was a long flat rectangle with a line down the middle where the two halves of the lid joined, with carvings of jungle animals and unfamiliar symbols woven around the name etched out along the top. Arya, unmoved by such paltry things as elaborate hand carved decorations, was already flipping it open. 

“It’s a game!” she said in surprise but not disappointment; a mysterious game was probably as good as treasure in her book. The board was simple but no less beautiful than the outside. Four separate tracks, one from each corner, wound in and out of one another before each ending separately at a glass dome set in the very centre. Two pieces, carved in the shape of a rhino and an elephant, were out, stuck to the board on their separate tracks. The flaps of the lid folded back to reveal a pair of lidded comportments, where they found the two remaining pieces – a crocodile and a monkey – and the dice, and the rules.

“Jumanji,” Sansa read again. “A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind. You roll the dice to move your token, doubles get another turn, the first player to reach the end wins.”

“Sounds easy,” snorted Arya. “Like a game Robin should play. Why’d someone glue pieces to the board?” She flicked at the elephant piece with one finger but it sat firm, unyielding.

“Dunno,” shrugged Sansa, turning the other playing pieces over in her hands. There was something almost hypnotic about the weight of them between her fingers, and the carvings were intricately beautiful. “Maybe someone was setting up a joke.”

“It’s not a good joke,” snorted Arya, idly tossing the dice down onto the board with a clatter.

The pieces in Sansa’s hand jerked like puppets pulled by an invisible string, snaping to attention on opposite corners of the board. Sansa and Ayra gaped at each other and then down at the board, and even as they looked on the crocodile began to glide smoothly forward, covering the five spaces that Arya had inadvertently rolled.

“How’s it _doing_ that?” Arya breathed.

“Magnets,” suggested Sansa uncertainly, flipping the board up briefly to check underneath. “Or…maybe there’s a battery.”

If there was, it was well hidden. She turned the board back upright and realised for the first time that words had formed in the glass dome in the centre. 

* * *

_**A tiny bite can make you itch, make you sneeze, make you twitch.** _

* * *

“What does that mean?” frowned Arya.

Sansa shook her head, tracing the letters with a finger. A strange buzzing noise was filling the air and she glanced up, ready to snap at Arya for being annoying…and let out a scream of disgust.

Just behind her sister hovered the single most enormous mosquito she had ever seen, as big as a fist. Arya span round and then pinwheeled backwards in surprise, narrowly missing the evil-looking sting that had been almost level with her eyes. The bug zipped over their heads, three more close on its tail, and Sansa squealed again and ducked, covering her head with her arms. 

Arya was back on her feet. She’d somehow found an old racket and was using it to swat wildly at the insects, the last few summers spent playing tennis with the boys suddenly paying off all at once. There was a crash and the tinkle of falling glass as one particularly well-aimed strike sent the largest bug barrelling through the attic window, and with a furious hum its friends followed it out into the fresh air.

“Where did they come from?” Sansa shrieked, peering around the cavernous attic.

“I think they came from…that,” said Arya, gesturing uncertainly at the game with wide eyes. Sansa snorted, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear with a shaking hand.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said imperiously. “That’s not possible.”

“ _A tiny bite can make you itch,”_ Arya chanted pointedly, but Sansa shoved her away.

“Coincidence. And a bite from those things wouldn’t be tiny. Aunt Lysa said the exterminator was coming today; that’s obviously why.”

“I thought the exterminator was coming for the bats,” Arya muttered mulishly, proving once and for all that she paid far more attention to what was going on than she pretended to.

“Bats and bugs, it’s all the same thing!” Sansa snapped. “Giant bugs don’t get magicked up by creepy games. Look, I’ll prove it to you.”

Frustrated, and more shaken than she wanted to let on, she grabbed the dice and tossed them with an authoritative air down onto the board.

* * *

**_This will not be an easy mission – monkeys slow the expedition_ **

* * *

There was a crash from downstairs, followed by an inhuman shriek.

“What was _that_?” gasped Sansa, leaping to her feet.

“If it’s monkeys, I’m saying I told you so,” Arya grouched as they raced down the stairs, following the sound of the ongoing din. Sansa paused outside the kitchen door, heart in her mouth, but Arya barrelled right past her and swung it open with a push.

Inside, no fewer than twelve monkeys instantly swivelled their heads to stare at the newcomers. The room was already a wreak, the cupboards pulled apart, destroyed food and furniture all over the floor, and even as they stood there another monkey swung past on the light fitting, pulling the whole thing clean down off the ceiling. One of the monkeys shrieked, and then they were all at it, jumping up and down on the spot, screeching and grabbing whatever was closest to fling towards the open doorway. 

Arya darted backwards, pulling the door closed with a _snap,_ and the two sisters stared at each other for a long, pregnant second, before fleeing as one back up the stairs.

* * *

“I told you so!” Arya crowed the minute they were safely ensconced back in the attic. “I _told_ you so!”

“Alright!” Sansa yelled back, her body still thrumming. She bent over the board, turning it this way and that. “It just doesn’t make sense…”

“Magic,” shrugged Arya with the calm certainty of a ten-year-old discovering the world to be everything she suspected it might. “Makes sense.”

“It does not make sense!” Sansa snapped, her eyes falling on the block of text she hadn’t noticed earlier. She read it with a sinking heart. “Oh, no…” she murmured, almost to herself, but Arya heard.

“What? What is it?”

“I didn’t notice this bit earlier,” Sansa admitted, twisting her hands together anxiously. Arya peered over her shoulder to read it aloud.

“Adventurers beware; do not begin unless you intend to finish. The exciting consequences of the game will vanish only when a player has reached Jumanji and called out it’s name.”

“Exciting consequences?” snorted Sansa, feeling a touch delirious. “They call destroying Aunt Lysa’s kitchen an _exciting consequence?”_

“Maybe we should stop playing,” said Arya dubiously, reaching out the close the board up. Sansa grabbed her hands, stopping her.

“No!”

“ _No?!”_

“The game says, we finish it and it all goes away. We should just get it over with. It’s not like there’s any skill involved, we just have to keep rolling.”

“And avoid the giant mosquitos, and the angry monkeys,” pointed out Arya in the dry tones she’d inherited from their father.

“We just have to keep rolling _quickly_ ,” Sansa amended. “And get it over with before Aunt Lysa and Robin come home, or she’ll freak.”

“Maybe she’d send me to live with Uncle Benjen and Jon,” muttered Arya obstinately, but though she was frowning she didn’t object any further, and reached for the dice.

“No, it’s me again,” Sansa corrected, knocking her hand away and trying to ignore the way her heart had clenched at Arya’s comment. “I rolled a double.”

“Suit yourself,” shrugged Arya, crouching back on her haunches to watch as Sansa let the dice fall.

* * *

**_His fangs are sharp, he likes your taste. Your party better move post haste._ **

* * *

Sansa had only ever seen lions in zoos before, and she’d never appreciated how much smaller they seemed when safely confined behind bars. The beast before them now was huge; it could open its mouth and fit Sansa’s entire head inside without any effort. 

It sort of looked like it wanted to.

Arya’s breath was coming in short sharp bursts besides her. Sansa didn’t remember reaching for her sister’s hand but she was clutching it now, tighter than she ever had when they were small and Mum had made them all link up to cross roads. She was dimly aware that Arya was taking tiny shuffling steps backwards and trying to tug Sansa along with her, but her feet appeared to have forgotten their usual purpose and were rooted to the spot. The lion’s eyes were fixed on them as it took one step forward, and then another, almost nonchalant.

“It’s not real…” Sansa breathed, more prayer than conviction. “We’re imagining it…”

She obviously had an excellent imagination. The beast’s muscles contracted and bunched as it crouched, ready to spring, and Sansa desperately wanted to slam her eyes closed, to not have those enormous teeth flying for her neck be the last thing she ever saw, but even that small movement was beyond the capability of her terrified body. She tried to picture her parents’ faces, or her brothers’, to have her last moments be spent thinking about anything but this, but her mind was nothing but a static blur.

And then Arya let out a small _ah_ of satisfaction, and there was the unmistakable click of the door opening. Sansa found herself almost thrown off her feet by the force with which Arya hurled them backwards through the doorway, but it was the jolt her body needed to come back online and by the time they hit the staircase her longer stride meant she was the one towing Arya along instead. They thundered down the stairs, the only thoughts in Sansa’s head being _out_ and _down_ , and she didn’t see the figure standing on the first-floor landing until they’d practically crashed into him. 

“Get in there and shut the door!” the man yelled above the sound of cracking wood, practically throwing both girls into the nearest room, and this time it was Sansa who kept her wits just long enough to slam the door shut behind them.

There was a series of snarls and crashes and then nothing but a long, eery silence. 

“Is it gone?” hissed Arya, reaching towards the door handle. 

“Don’t!” snapped Sansa, slapping her hand away.

“Wood won’t stop it if it’s still there!”

“That doesn’t mean we need to tell it _where we are!”_ Sansa exclaimed, but Arya had always been quicker; she flicked the handle and slipped out before Sansa could grab her.

Jon would _kill_ her if he heard Sansa had left Arya to be eaten by a lion. With a fatalistic sigh, Sansa crept out after her.

There was no sign of the lion, though Aunt Lysa’s bedroom door was closed and an ominous rumbling purr could be heard vibrating through the wood. At first Sansa thought they were completely alone again, the entire event nothing but a terrifying hallucination if not for the destruction around them, and then she saw the man. 

He was standing on the edge of the gallery, staring down into the hallway below, dressed in the strangest looking clothes Sansa had ever seen; parts of it looked like it had been made from stitched together leaves. There was a sharp, mean-looking knife in his left hand, and his right arm ended abruptly in a scarred stump just above the wrist. His face was almost completely obscured by his hair and an enormous bushy beard, but what little of it Sansa could make out was contorted in an expression she couldn’t understand; an ecstasy so powerful it was paining him.

Everything about him was making Sansa’s monkey brain, well and truly woken by the lion, scream _danger_ and _run_ and _**away,**_ but before her body could follow through, Arya – stupid brave _stupid_ Arya – was speaking.

“Hello. Who are you?”

The effect on the man was like a jolt of electricity; he spun round, bringing the knife up and then letting it drop almost immediately when he realised who they were.

“Five, or eight,” he said in a low, rough voice, taking one step, and then a second, towards them.

“What?” asked Arya, her face screwed up in confusion as she completely ignored Sansa’s desperate tugging on her sleeve.

“Five, or eight,” the man repeated, his eyes darting between them. “One of you must have rolled. Who was it?”

Arya hesitated and Sansa froze, trying to parse the man’s tone and expression – anger, blame, pleasure? – and failing.

“It was me,” Sansa said firmly, stepping forward before Arya could do something stupid like take the fall for Sansa’s dice roll with a dangerous madman. “I rolled eight.”

There was another strange pause as the man’s eyes roved from Sansa’s face to the walls around them and back again, and then with no warning he let out a blood-curdling scream and threw himself towards her. Sansa had the briefest moment to hope that Arya had the sense to run while he was distracted with attacking her, and then he had swept her up into his arms, spinning her around in a wide circle and crushing her to his chest. He smelt of dirt and sweat and leather, and through the rough fabric of his strange shirt Sansa could feel his chest heaving as he half sobbed “thank you, _thank you_ ” into her hair. 

And then just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped; he dropped her back onto her feet and took off at a run, flinging himself down the stairs and yelling at the top of his voice. 

“Cersei! Tyrion! I’m home! Dad! I’m hooome!”

His voice echoed as he ran through the empty rooms. Sansa and Arya crept down after him and by the time they reached the bottom few steps he was back in the hallway, panting heavily. 

“Who _are_ you?!” Arya demanded again.

“Who are _you?”_ the man snapped right back. “What are you doing in my house?”

“It’s our Aunt’s house,” frowned Sansa. “No one’s lived her for years before us.”

The man’s face was doing something strange again, crumpling and twisting. 

“What do you mean, years?” he demanded after a moment. “Where’s my family? Cersei, Tyrion, do you know them? Where’s my _dad?”_

His voice cracked on the last word, and Sansa found herself reaching out to touch his arm instinctively. 

“I don’t know…” she started to say, but Arya’s voice, sharp and shocked, cut across her.

“Are you _Jaime Lannister?!”_ she demanded, staring up at him with huge eyes.

The man nodded eagerly, his attention snapping to Arya in an instant. “Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m Sansa, this is Arya,” said Sansa slowly, carefully. “We live here now.”

“Where’s my family?” the man – _Jaime –_ asked again, a desperate note in his voice, and Sansa just shook her head, her heart clenching at the lost look on his face.

“We don’t know,” Arya whispered. “This house has been empty for years. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

Jaime stared at them in blank confusion. “Dead?” he spluttered at last.

“For twenty-six years,” Arya confirmed.

“Twenty-six years…” he breathed, and Sansa only realised she was still patting his arm in a failed attempt at comfort when she felt him shift and sway under her grip. Between them she and Arya manoeuvred him down so that he was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, his head buried in his arms. “Twenty-six _years…”_

“Where _have_ you been?” Sansa asked, unable to keep the note of scepticism out of her voice.

“In Jumanji,” the man muttered, as if that explained anything at all. 

“In the _game?!”_ scoffed Arya, disbelieving, but the man didn’t answer; he was pushing himself back up, climbing to his feet with surprising grace, and before either of them could react he’d pulled back completely, sprinting out the front door and away.

* * *

They followed him through the streets, around the park and down the mostly boarded-up high street. He ran like a man possessed, paying no heed to his surroundings until he skidded to a halt outside a large, empty office building, with a sad _For Sale_ sign hanging listlessly from one corner, creaking in the wind. Sansa could just make out the faded lettering spelling out _Lannister, Inc_ above the metal shutters that must have once been the front entrance. 

“What happened here?” he rasped, staring up at the empty building. There was a beggar sitting huddled against the brickwork by the doorway, and he squinted up at the three of them through muzzy eyes.

“Bad investments, recession,” he wheezed. “Old Tywin was a miser and a hard man, but not even he could survive that. And he took most of the town down with him.”

“You know him?” Jaime demanded eagerly, pushing forward into the man’s personal space. “Tywin Lannister, you know him?”

“Worked for him, years ago,” the man confirmed. “Before and after his lad disappeared. He never recovered from that. I think the market crash was almost a relief, when it happened.”

“Do you know where I can find him now?”

The beggar laughed madly, a horrid wet sound that turned into a hacking cough. 

“Six feet down, boy. He’s been dead and buried for ten years.”

* * *

They trailed back to the house, despondent. If Jaime realised they were still following him he made no indication of it. Several times Sansa opened her mouth to speak, though she was never sure what she was going to say, but every time she tried Arya silenced her with a glare. 

Jaime stumbled up the front path and left the door swinging open behind him; they slipped inside to find him standing in the middle of the cavernous hallway, staring around looking suddenly lost and small.

“Jaime…” Sansa began, and he span to face them, a mad look on his face.

“You’re not Cersei’s kids? Or Tyrion’s?” he demanded.

“No,” Sansa said quickly, taking a step back and pulling Arya with her. “No, we’ve never heard of those people.”

“That’s a good thing, though,” added Arya from behind Sansa’s back. “For you, anyway. Our parents are dead. Our brothers, too. Your family might not be.”

There was a short pause, and then all the rage seemed to flow out of Jaime at once. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, but it wasn’t like the empty platitudes that most adults used; he sounded sincere, genuine. Arya shrugged awkwardly so Sansa said “thank you,” in a quiet voice, because making up for Arya’s lack of manners was comfortingly familiar.

“My dad is dead,” Jaime carried on after a moment, with the air of a man scrambling to catch up with himself. “I knew that. There was no way anyone but a Lannister would be living in this house while he was still breathing.”

“But your siblings might not be,” pointed out Arya. “You’re not _that_ old.”

Jaime let out a bark of a laugh, and then looked surprised at himself for doing so.

“We can help you find them,” Arya continued, and Jaime glanced down at her, surprise all over his face.

“You’d do that?” he asked.

“Of course,” shrugged Arya easily, at the same time as Sansa snapped, “No!”

Two heads swivelled round to stare in her direction, Arya mutinous, Jaime…unsurprised.

“What do you mean, _no_?” snapped Arya.

“I mean no, not yet,” Sansa said sharply. “There’s still a lion upstairs in Aunt Lysa’s room. And the monkeys.”

“So?!”

“ _So,_ what if it escapes and hurts someone? Or Aunt Lysa comes home? Those mosquitos are flying all over town and they are definitely poisonous, and the monkeys are probably destroying things as we speak!” She paused, swallowed. _Be brave like Robb,_ she thought. _Do what is right, not what is easy._ “You help us finish the game first. Then we help you find your family.”

“Sansa!” yelped Arya, but Sansa kept her eyes fixed firmly on Jaime’s. 

“The board says, we finish the game and this all goes away. So you help us sort this mess out, and then we’ll help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” sneered Jaime, and for the first time since he’d dropped his knife to hug her Sansa remembered how dangerous this man had first seemed. 

“You do,” she said firmly, biting down hard on the shake she could feel trying to sneak into her voice. “The world’s changed a lot in twenty-six years. We know how things work now, things that can help you find them far more quickly. Did the internet even exist when you left?”

“I’m desperate, girl,” he growled. 

“So am I!” snapped Sansa. “We need to get rid of these things before they hurt anyone!”

“So do it without me!”

“We can’t, Sansa’s right” Arya interjected, chewing her lip and looking pained at herself for admitting it. “We already tried and it’s just made things worse. We don’t know how to fight the things that might come out of there. You do.”

Jaime looked between them, and a part of Sansa’s brain wanted to weep at the agony on his face, hated herself for stopping him from leaving like he so clearly wanted to. But she had to be the sensible one, now more than ever; she had to be Robb. He wouldn’t have left a lion in the house to eat Aunt Lysa, no matter how annoying she was. 

Arya sighed in disgust. “Forget it, Sansa, he’s not going to help us. He’s afraid.”

“What did you say?”

Arya slanted a glance towards Sansa, who resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She knew that goading tone of Arya’s all too well, she’d been on the receiving end of it often enough.

“I said, you’re afraid,” repeated Arya succinctly.

Jaime laughed, but it was a cold, humourless sound.

“Afraid?” he taunted. “Afraid? You have no idea what you’re getting yourselves into.”

“Whatever it is, we can handle it,” Arya shrugged with a confidence Sansa definitely did not feel. 

“You two? Handle it?” scoffed Jaime derisively. “I don’t think so. You think monkeys, mosquitos, and lions are bad? That is just the beginning. I've seen things you've only seen in your nightmares. Things you can't even imagine. Things you can't even see. There are things that hunt you in the night. Then something screams. Then you hear them eating, and you hope to God that you're not dessert. Afraid? You don't even know what afraid is. You would not last five minutes without me. I’m not afraid; I think you’re _insane._ You wouldn’t last five minutes without me. _”_

His voice was a low rasp and Sansa shivered involuntarily.

 _“_ So you’ll help us?” she pushed, coming forward to stand besides Arya and stare up at his pale face, ignoring the goosebumps pricking up and down her spine. His eyes darted wildly from one sister to the other and he licked his lips once, twice, a nervous tick.

“Ok,” he acquiesced at last. “Ok. You're going to do it anyway, whatever I say. I’ll watch. Only watch. And then you help me find my family.”

“Deal,” said Sansa solemnly, firmly stamping down the little burst of triumph in her gut and holding out her hand like she’d seen her dad do in business meetings. Jaime eyed it for a moment and then raised his stump, tapping her palm with a sardonic grin. Sansa felt her cheeks flush and she dropped her arm hurriedly, looking away.

“But first,” Jaime continued, ignoring her embarrassment and holding up his hand to stave off their protests, “No, I’m not afraid. But first I’m going to use indoor plumbing for the first time in twenty-six years.”

He glared at them, as if daring them to laugh or comment, and when neither was forthcoming, slunk from the room. Only once he was gone did Sansa and Arya exchanged grins.

“I know what you did there,” Sansa pointed out, not unpleasantly.

Arya shrugged innocently. “Worked on him better than you,” she said lightly, and Sansa tried not to let her surprise at the compliment show on her face.

* * *

They re-convened in the large sunny front room, the one Aunt Lysa kept trying to call the drawing room. Jaime looked small and strange with his beard shaved off and his mass of hair hacked short, but tamer, too; a housecat as opposed to a lion. He’d found clothes from somewhere too, proper normal clothes, but he still prowled the edges of the room like a caged creature, staying as far as possible from the open board game and eyeing it distrustfully. 

“Right, Arya, your turn,” said Sansa determinedly, trying desperately to sound braver than she felt; although the intention was for Jaime to protect them, his presence so far was just putting her more on edge.

“Ready Jaime?” Arya asked, glancing over.

“There is no ready,” Jaime glowered, staring at them both with intense distaste. “Get it over with.”

Arya, for once in her life doing as she was told without argument, rolled. 

Nothing happened. 

Frowning, Arya scooped up the dice and tried again, and then a third time.

“What…” frowned Sansa, staring down at the stationary pieces. “Jaime, it isn’t working.”

“What do you mean, not working?” Jaime crept forward, peering down at them.

“She means,” sniped Arya, giving the dice a demonstrative shake and rolling them once more, “it’s not working.”

Jaime flinched when the dice hit the wooden top, but his glare morphed into a deep frown as he squinted at the unmoving board.

“It’s not your turn…” he said slowly, reaching out with a shaking finger to touch to rhino token. 

“It is,” insisted Sansa blankly. “Arya rolled first, then me twice, because doubles, and now Arya again.”

“No, look,” murmured Jaime, his voice full of a sort of hypnotic dread. “Those two are your pieces, right? So what about these.” His finger caressed the rhino token and then strayed over the brush the top of the elephant. “This one was mine. You’re playing the same game I started twenty-six years ago. I’m going to have to play.”

His eyes were fixed on the board as he spoke, his voice deep and trembling, and no matter what he might have said about not being afraid Sansa had never seen a grown-up look so terrified. She fumbled for the dice and tried to press them into his hand, but Jaime shock his head blankly, still not looking up from the pieces in front of them.

“No, it’s not my turn,” he muttered.

“So whose is it?” pressed Arya, frustrated.

“ _Brienne’s.”_

* * *

The house Jaime led them to was in what Aunt Lysa called the rough part of town, but it didn’t look rough to Sansa; sad seemed like a better word. The house was set back from the road on the banks of the river, with a near front garden and the building itself in good repair, but it felt lonely and unloved. There were no plants or flowers, the curtains were firmly drawn, and the only sign that anyone lived there at all was a beaten-up van parked on the drive. Sansa found herself drawing closer to Jaime’s reassuring bulk as they stared up at the house from the front gate, even if Arya seemed unconcerned.

“What?” she demanded a few steps up the front path, when she realised they were no longer at her side. “Is it the wrong house?”

“No,” Jaime said instantly, a hoarse note to his voice that Sansa couldn’t parse. “I mean, yes. It’s the right house.” He was staring at it with that expression again, the one like what he was seeing physically hurt him. “It’s just…changed, a bit.”

“Come on,” said Sansa, laying a hand on his maimed arm and tugging him gently forward. “We can still knock. Whoever lives here now might know where your friend went.”

“Brienne,” said Jaime. “Her name’s Brienne. Her dad, he…he was like my dad, a bit. If he’s still alive he’ll still be living here.” He paused for a moment, halfway up the path, looking more contemplative than fearful at least. “Selwyn didn’t like me all that much either, come to think of it. Said I was trouble.”

“You’ve lived inside a game for twenty years and you’ve only got one hand,” pointed out Arya from the front step, the _well duh_ evident without her having to say it out loud. Jaime chuckled in delighted surprise at her words, and Sansa was just starting to think what a nice sound it was when it cut off, strangled, by the rap of Arya’s little fist on the faded wood of the front door.

The silence stretched, and Arya was just raising her hand to knock again when the sound of footsteps hurried towards them, and the door was creaked open a few inches by the tallest women Sansa had ever seen. 

Back home, when home had still been home, they had had neighbours with daughters of around Jon and Robb’s age. Dacey Mormont had towered over every other kid at school, not to mention half the adults as well. 

This woman would make Dacey look like a child. 

Arya was staring up at the woman with her mouth slightly agape - and _really,_ Catelyn Stark had taught her better than that, Sansa _knew_ she had – while Jaime…Jaime’s face had gone slack and white. He was staring at the woman like a man in a desert suddenly presented with an oasis, and Sansa had to say something if only to have a reason to stop looking at his expression. 

“Hello,” she said, using her best Tully manners. “My name’s Sansa Stark. We’re looking for a woman named Brienne who used to live here, do you know where we might find her?”

“I’m Brienne Tarth,” the woman said; her voice was low and steady, calm, and Sansa would probably have liked it if it hadn’t been overlaid with Jaime’s hoarse croak of “ _Brienne_.”

The woman’s eyes snapped from Sansa’s face to Jaime’s, and her brow, which had been creased in confusion, furrowed deeper. The door hinges whined as she opened it a little wider to peer through, and her eyes flashed a startling shade of blue in the weak sunlight. 

_She has the most beautiful eyes,_ Sansa thought to herself, watching the two adults watch each other transfixed. _Like her voice._ _It’s a pity about the rest of her._

“Who are you?” Brienne asked, and her voice wasn’t calm now, it was stretched taught, cracking. Her hand was gripping the edge of the door and her knuckles were white with tension, but her eyes were fixed on Jaime’s face with something like fear and a lot of disbelief and just a hint of…hope? 

“I’m Sansa Stark,” Sansa began again, but she was cut off by Jaime.

“Brienne,” he said again, brushing past Sansa like he’d forgotten she was there, gravitating towards the woman still half hidden behind the door like a moth to a flame. Something in her face twitched, jumped, the shadows from the dark hall behind her dancing over her broad features even though her eyes didn’t flicker, didn’t move, from where they were locked on Jaime’s. His hand on the door seemed to jerk her out of whatever haze she was in; she moved as if to slam it in their faces, but she was too slow. Jamie’s foot was firmly on the threshold and the wood bounced harmlessly off it.

“Twenty-six years ago you played a game with a boy from up the hill,” he said, half crooning, and other than the briefest flicker of her tongue darting out to wet her upper lip Brienne didn’t move a muscle. Sansa had never seen a snake charmer work but she thought it must be something like this. “A game that moved by itself.”

“How do you know that?” Brienne whispered, her voice quivering.

“I was the boy, Brienne,”

“ _Jaime,”_ gasped Brienne, and it was as if they were a pair of puppets whose strings had been cut, the moment the name passed her lips; Brienne slumped backwards, the door swinging open as she loosened her grip, and, at Sansa’s side, Jaime crumpled in relief. 

“Yeah. Hi,” he said, more force in his voice now even as he reached up with his maimed arm to rub awkwardly on the back of his neck while her eyes tracked its every move. “It’s been a while, Brienne.”

She stared at him blankly across the threshold, apparently beyond words, and after a moments pause in which she said nothing more, Jaime gestured for Arya and Sansa to enter the house ahead of him.

“It’s smaller here than I remember,” he commented laconically once he’d pulled the front door shut behind them, gazing around the hallway with what Sansa strongly suspected was a very feigned disinterest. 

Maybe it was his cavalier tone, or maybe the initial shock was starting to subside, but at his words Brienne stiffened back to attention.

“Jaime, where the hell have you _been?!”_

She rounded on him, ignoring his comment with what seemed to Sansa to be a very practiced air. But before he could answer there was a groan from the next room; Brienne jumped as if stung and hurried through the door leaving the three of them standing awkwardly in the hallway. Or rather, Sansa and Arya stood awkwardly, watching Jaime stare in the direction Brienne had disappeared in with a lost look in his eyes. Sansa tried to peer after her without looking like she was doing so, but it was too dark; all she could make out was the tall woman bending over the shape of someone – a man? – ensconced in an armchair, a bulky blanket over his lap. Brienne was murmuring something Sansa couldn’t hear, and then there was the click and flash of a television being turned on.

She was back in a matter of moments, pulling the door gently shut behind her and hustling them down the narrow hallway into a room at the back of the house.

“My father,” she explained into the silence of nobody asking. “He’s not well. Noise upsets him sometimes.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaime said with that same note of genuine sympathy Sansa had heard earlier when they told him about their family. “What…?”

“Aneurism, eight years ago. He’s not…he didn’t recover well,” Brienne said in the tone of one who very much did not want to discuss the matter further. Arya had already lost interest, wandering across the room to stare out the large windows that looked out over the river behind the house, but Jaime did not have the look of a man ready to drop the subject and so Sansa interjected before he had a chance to speak again.

“We’re here to talk to you about Jumanji,” she said firmly, and both adults span to face her like they’d forgotten she was still there.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brienne said in a voice that rang with false conviction.

“This,” said Arya helpfully, pulling the wooden box out of her backpack. “You started playing with Jaime years ago,”

There was a brief second in which Sansa worried Brienne was going to faint; her eyes locked on the game and she went pale, paler even than she had at the sight of Jaime on her front step, and swayed on the spot. Jaime obviously had the same concern, and he took a step towards her, reaching out with his good hand to hover in the air over her shoulder.

“That’s not real,” Brienne whispered through lips that barely moved. “It’s a lie my brain made up to protect me.”

“Brienne, your brain has never lied to you a day in your life,” Jaime scoffed. “It’s real. I promise it’s real.”

“Your father killed you,” Brienne insisted desperately, her eyes searching Jaime’s face for something Sansa couldn’t see. “He killed you and chopped you up so there was no body, and he got away with it.”

“Come on, Brienne, my dad? If he was going to kill one of his sons he’d have picked Tyrion, you know that. Easier to hide the body as much as anything.”

Brienne was still visibly trembling, and Jaime’s hand finally made the leap from awkward hovering to settle firmly on Brienne’s arm. The contact seemed to calm her, somehow, and the trembling stopped as she leant into the touch.

“That’s what Tyrion says too,” she mumbled, staring down at where he was clasping her bicep, the start of a reluctant smile on her lips.

“He was always the smart one,” Jaime agreed gently, in the soothing tone Sansa remembered her dad using on Bran or Rickon, or indeed Sansa herself, after a bad dream. “You’re still in touch with him? How is he?”

“A little, some years more than others,” Brienne confirmed softly. “He’s ok…he’s, well, he’s divorced. And drinking, the drinking is probably not ok, but considering…Jaime, you _disappeared.”_

Her voice cracked on the last word, and Jaime flinched at the broken sound.

“I know,” he said, eyes screwed shut as if in pain. “I know, and I’m sorry, Brienne, I’m so sorry…”

“You were there one minute and then that _game_ and you were just _gone!”_ Brienne continued unheeding, though Sansa noticed that even as she waved her arm in emphasise of her words she was very careful not to dislodge Jaime’s hand, still clutching at her shoulder. She shuddered, a full body tremble, and ran a shaking hand through her short-cropped hair, eyes squeezed shut for a long moment. When she opened them again her face was taught and blank, some modicum of control regained, and her gaze was back on Sansa. 

“I’m sorry,” she apologised in a voice that rang with determined calm. “I’m Brienne. And you’re…Sarah, was it?”

“Sansa,” Sansa corrected. “Sansa Stark. And this is my sister Arya,”

“Is that your boat?” asked Arya curiously, jerking her chin at the window.

To Brienne’s credit, she only blinked once, which was better than most people managed on first meeting Sansa’s sister; but then maybe Brienne was already having a pretty rough day. 

“We need your help,” Sansa continued determinedly, before the conversation could get completely derailed. Brienne didn’t speak, but her eyes flickered towards the game Arya had set down on the coffee table. “We need to finish it.”

“Why do you need my help?” Brienne asked carefully, and though she still hadn’t moved every inch of her was coiled tight, ready to run. 

“It’s your turn,” Jaime said with forced calm, and he held out the dice in his upturned palm.

Brienne backed away from him clumsily, knocking into an arm chair, until her back hit the wall with a soft thud. He matched her step for step

“No,” she said softly, and then again, more firmly. “ _No.”_

“Brienne…” Jaime began, but Brienne cut him off.

“ _No,_ Jaime. I won’t. I _can’t._ You don’t understand, you’ve not been here! I watched you evaporate into dust and get sucked into that thing and not a single person has ever once believed me! Not your dad, not my dad, not the police! I was a suspect in your _murder!”_

“And I grew up in literal hell!” Jaime roared back. The two of them were facing each other now, squaring off. They were like rice paper, Sansa thought, dazed; one strike enough to set them both up in flames. “Did you ever wonder about that, huh, Brienne, when you were having such a hard time here in your house with your dad right there?! ‘In the jungle you must wait…”

His voice had taken on a mocking, sing-song tone as he jabbed at her chest with his stump.

“…until the dice read five or eight,” Brienne finished the rhyme, her voice full of breathless horror. “Jaime…”

“Until the dice read five or eight,” Jaime repeated with a snarl. “I lost a _hand_ waiting in that damn place for someone out here to be brave enough to roll again! Twenty-six _years,_ Brienne! And I was all alone!”

Brienne looked like she’d been slapped, staring at him in naked despair. “So was I,” she whispered, lost, helpless. “Jaime…”

“Don’t,” he snapped, and the anger left as quickly as it had arrived, leaving nothing but exhaustion behind. “Don’t, Brienne.”

For a moment the air was filled with nothing but the sound of their heavy breathing, both panting from the exertion and the emotion. 

“I’m sorry,” Jaime began again at last, but Brienne cut him off.

“So am I,” she said wearily. “But I…can’t you see? I can’t do that again. I don’t know why you _want_ to. You can stay here for a few days, I can get in touch with Tyrion for you, help you find your feet, but I can’t touch that game again. I’m sorry. But I can’t.”

Sansa looked from one to the other, dread curling in her stomach. Help finding his family was the only hold they had over Jaime, never mind that it was obvious now they needed both adults to finish what they started. 

“But you’ve got to help us,” she interjected, drawing their attention back to her. “ _Please.”_

Brienne started to shake her head, her eyes wide and her mouth parting to no doubt apologise again, but Sansa overrode every polite instinct she possessed and ploughed on. 

“There’s a lion in our aunt’s bedroom. A troupe of monkeys wreaked the kitchen. And a swarm of giant insects flying round stinging people and putting them in the hospital. And it’s our fault! We need to fix it, and we need you to help us do it. People are going to get hurt if we don't.”

Brienne hesitated, her eyes flickering to Jaime again, and Sansa held her breath. 

“She’s right,” said Jaime in a heavy voice. “I wish she wasn’t, I know what else could come through from that place better than anyone. But we can’t leave things as they are, it’s too dangerous already. The giant hornets alone are going to kill people.”

There was a long pause during which Brienne stared from Jaime to Sansa and back again, dread and despair etched on every inch of her face, and then she screwed her eyes shut and nodded, just once, no more than a tiny twitch of muscle, but a nod all the same.

“Ok,” she agreed, little more than an exhalation. “Ok. I’ll do it.”

* * *

They returned to the big house at Brienne’s insistence – “Not here,” she’d snapped when Arya had made to set up the board in her back room, “I can’t risk my dad.” The house seemed unchanged by their brief absence; Aunt Lysa’s door was still firmly closed and there was no sign of either the monkeys or the mosquitos. Jaime stalked from room to room with a practiced air, and Sansa wondered how many times he’d done that before, scouting a territory for threats before settling in it. She, Arya and Brienne waited in the living room, perched on the dusty old furniture Aunt Lysa had already declared they would be disposing of. Brienne was fidgeting, her fingers twitching and spasming as she looked around the room with wary eyes.

“It’s ok,” Sansa said in her best approximation of her mother’s comforting voice. “We didn’t play down here before. There shouldn’t be anything.”

A strange smile flickered across Brienne’s face. “It’s not that,” she said carefully after a moment. “I just…last time I was here, things didn’t go so well.”

“Is this where Jaime got took?” Arya asked curiously, leaning forward in interest. Brienne took a shuddering breath and nodded.

“Yes. We were playing in here that night. And then, later…”

“You came _back_?!” asked Sansa despite herself. Brienne swallow and nodded tightly.

“Yes. I thought…Tyrion, that’s Jaime’s brother, he was young, at the time, and he believed me, sort of, at first. He found the game, and we were going to try and play again. But Jaime’s sister found us, and then his dad, and they were…they were not pleased. Then my dad got involved. There was a lot of yelling. My dad stopped me from coming here, after that. And Tywin told Tyrion he’d destroyed the game.”

“That sounds like dad,” said Jaime in a grim voice, making all three of them jump as he came back into the room and shut the doors behind him with a _snap_. “Misdirection and overreaction. Can’t say I missed him. We’re clear.”

Brienne looked like she wanted to speak, but before she could work out the words Arya was spreading the board out on the low table in front of them and thrusting the dice into her large hands. Brienne swallowed thickly as her fingers closed around them, and Jaime came to perch opposite her, on the sofa besides Sansa.

“Ready?” Brienne asked, and though she seemed to be speaking to all of them her eyes were fixed on Jaime’s.

“Ready,” said Sansa firmly, and Brienne let the dice fall.

* * *

**_They grow much faster than bamboo. Take care or they'll come after you._ **

* * *

The vines moved like a living creature, snaking out of the walls and up between the floorboards like brick and wood was no more substantial than wet paper. 

“Stay very still,” Jaime said in hushed tones after they’d all leapt to their feet and huddled together, he and Brienne flanking Arya and Sansa. “And look out for the pods,”

“What are the pods?” breathed Brienne, eyes darting left and right, and at that exact moment Arya let out a yell and disappeared from Sansa’s side. There was a vine wrapped tight around her ankle, pulling her towards the cabinet in the far corner, and as Sansa watched the wooden door sprang open and an enormous yellow pod with a bright purple flower burst out. It would have been almost pretty if not for the evil-looking spurs that were aiming for Arya’s thrashing form.

Sansa moved without thinking, dimly aware of Jaime mirroring her. They leapt forward to seize Arya by each arm and haul desperately against the plant. It was strong, though, too strong, and though they slowed her progress they couldn’t free her. And then suddenly Brienne was there, with a _sword_ of all things, and she bought it down with a decisive _thwack_ to sever the vine that had Arya trapped. Sansa and Jaime rocked backwards at the sudden loss of tension, dragging Arya with them, and the three ended in a messy jumble against the coffee table. 

“Ok, Arya, you’re ok?” demanded Jaime harshly, running his good hand down her face and then over her ankle where the plant had seized her, while his stump rested reassuringly on Sansa’s shoulder.

“Fine, I’m fine,” panted Arya, wriggling her limbs experimentally. “Brienne, that was _awesome_.”

All three turned to look up at Brienne, who was still standing over them with the sword firmly in hand. Her face was flushed, though whether from adrenaline or from pleasure at the compliment Sansa couldn’t tell. 

“They seem to have stopped, for now,” she observed in her low voice, ignoring the praise. “Does cutting off the pod kill them?”

“No,” said Jaime grimly, scrambling to his feet and pulling Arya up after him. “But it will slow them, for a while. Let’s get out of here. Keep the sword, though.”

* * *

They retreated to the dining room. Jaime and Brienne shoved a large chest of drawers in front of the doors to the living room in a vain attempt to slow the vines from breaking through if they started growing again, bickering quietly under their breath about the sword; from what she had overheard it sounded to Sansa like Brienne wanted Jaime to have it, and he was refusing to take it. 

She tuned them out. Now the initial adrenaline rush had faded she was allowing herself a moment to quietly and thoroughly fall to pieces. She didn’t cry or scream, was careful to make no outward sign of her distress, but she pressed her shoulder against Arya’s side and tried very hard not to think about how much she couldn’t bear the idea of there being no one else left. From the way Arya was, for once, tolerating the contact and not trying to shake her off, Sansa rather suspected her sister might also have been more rattled than she was letting on. 

It was…nice, in a strange way.

But the moment couldn’t last long. Brienne set the board up on the dining table and then looked over at Jaime, who was staring down at the dice in front of him.

“It’s your turn,” she said with something approaching gentleness. He nodded wordlessly but made no move to pick them up.

“Jaime…” Brienne started, but he cut her off with a sharp shake of his head.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, scooping the little wooden cubes up with shaking fingers. “I just…”

“Just what?” pushed Sansa gently.

Jaime took a deep, shuddering breath, his eyes screwed shut.

“Just…promise you won’t stop playing,” he said all in rush, one long exhaled breath. “If it sucks me in again. Promise you won’t…stop.”

“Of course,” said Sansa instantly.

“We swear,” agreed Arya, holding out her little fist. Sansa covered it with her own, remembering the number of times she’d seen Arya and the boys perform the same gesture before some game or other. Jaime’s good hand came to rest atop of hers, his palm rough and dry with calluses.

“Thank you,” he breathed, not looking up from their linked hands, and Sansa slanted her eyes in Brienne’s direction.

The tall woman’s face was a horror to see, wreaked with painful self-loathing as she stared at the side of Jaime’s head, but you couldn’t hear any of it in her voice as she lay her hand atop of Jaime’s, covering his fingers in her broad grip. 

“I promise,” she said, her deep voice ringing with the conviction of a vow, and Sansa couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t drop her hand from Jaime’s even after the rest of them broke apart, keeping a firm hold until he finally let out a gusty sigh and nodded, almost to himself, and reached for the dice.

* * *

**_Adventurers, take heed, beware! This is no cuddly teddy bear._ **

* * *

The snuffling noise came from behind them, through the doorway from the main hall. Jaime and Brienne were already on their feet, coming round the table to form a physical barrier between Arya and Sansa and whatever was approaching, but their bulk was not enough to block the sight of the single most enormous bear Sansa had ever seen shuffling into the room.

“It’s ok,” muttered Brienne, though whether she was trying to convince herself or them Sansa couldn’t tell. “It’s ok. Bears don’t attack unless threatened, or provoked. If we stay very still…”

The bear suddenly reared up on its hind legs, throwing its arms out wide and snarling and snapping at the air. 

“I think it’s provoked, Brienne!” hissed Jaime as its eyes swivelled and focused on them. “Run!”

They took off across the room to the only other way out; the large glass doors that led out onto the patio that ran the length of the back of the house. Sansa clutched Jaime’s hand with one of hers, letting him half pull her along while she kept a tight grip on Arya with her other. She didn’t realise there was a problem until Arya’s shout of “Wait, Brienne!” finally permeated her terrified ears. 

They skidded to a halt halfway across the overgrown lawns and turned to look back towards the house. The bear had followed them out and now stood on the patio, head swinging this way and that. It was torn, deciding between the three of them, huddled in the distance, and, Sansa realised with a sinking heart, Brienne; closer, louder, and doing her level best to provoke it into chasing her.

“Brienne, what are you _doing?!”_ Jaime howled in dismay, but Brienne ignored his question. 

“Get them out of here!” she yelled back, using the sword to jab forward in the bear’s direction and waving her other arm madly, making herself as big and threatening as the bear itself was. 

The bear took the bait, crashing back down onto all four limbs and starting to lumber towards Brienne’s taunting figure, and, with a look of intense satisfaction, Brienne turned heel and ran.

“Wait here!” Jaime snapped at Arya and Sansa and, without looking to make sure they had listened, pelted after her. The sisters exchanged a wordless glance and followed.

They rounded the side of the house to find the strangest sight Sansa had ever seen. There was a large, empty swimming pool here, cracked and damaged beyond repair – Aunt Lysa had briefly mentioned filling it and planting roses – and in it now stood Brienne and the bear. Whether she’d fallen in or jumped in intentionally Sansa couldn’t tell, but either way it had had the desired effect; the bear had leapt in after her, and was now trapped by the steep, ladderless sides.

Unfortunately, so was Brienne. 

Jaime lying flat on his belly at the pool edge, reaching helplessly for her, but the pit was too deep, and though her fingers brushed his neither could get a grip on the other. The bear was pacing back and forth, shaking off the shock of the fall, and even as Sansa looked on its head was swinging once more in Brienne’s direction. Brienne must have felt it’s focus because she turned away from Jaime’s dangling hand, bringing up the sword she still carried and jabbing warningly in the bears direction. The bear lunged and swiped, Jaime howled again, but the bear fell back and Brienne was still on her feet, albeit bleeding from a slash to her shoulder. Jaime was back on his feet, and Sansa only realised his intention to leap down into the pit with Brienne in the instant that he did so.

“Ladder,” rasped Arya by Sansa’s side. “Come on, Sansa, we need the ladder!”

It was lying in the long grass against the side of the house; old and rickety but all they had, and between the two of them they hauled it up and started dragging it back to the pool. In the pit Jaime was yelling and waving his arms at the bear, which had pulled back slightly in confusion at this second foe. Brienne was trying to take advantage of its distraction to circle closer again with the sword but it was too canny for that, constantly twisting and turning so that she was always within sight.

“Jaime!” Sansa hollered, dropping the end of the ladder over the side. “Brienne! Here!”

There was a brief, heart-stopping moment when Sansa thought they were actually going to argue about who climbed out first, but Jaime forestalled it by snatching the sword from Brienne’s hand and practically throwing her up the first few rungs. The ladder didn’t quite reach the top, but it was tall enough that she could grab the edge and haul herself up the rest of the way, and then spin straight back round to pull Jaime up after her.

They lay on the grass at the edge of the pool, panting heavily, for a long moment afterwards, while the bear paced uselessly below, thwarted. 

“What,” began Brienne in a dangerous voice, once her breathing had settled, “the hell were you thinking, Jaime!”

“What was I thinking?” blinked Jaime in rising indignation. “What was _I_ thinking?! Brienne, what were _you_ thinking?! Are you _crazy?!”_

Brienne was on her feet in seconds, anger and hurt flashing across her face. 

“Don’t ever,” she snarled, “ _ever_ call me crazy, you understand? I have been called crazy by every idiot in this town for twenty-six years and I will **not** take it from you.”

“Well maybe don’t go throwing yourself at bears and I won’t have too!” Jaime fired back. He was on his feet now as well, the two of them standing inches apart as they yelled. 

“That’s no reason for you to throw yourself in _after_ me! I told you to get them out of here!”

“So you _wanted_ to get eaten?!”

“I didn’t want **any** of this, weren’t you listening!

“We’re going inside now!” Arya yelled, cutting through their argument. “It’s my roll. We’ll be in the dining room if you need us. Playing the game.”

She marched off with an authoritative shake of her head; grinning to herself at the stunned looks on the adults’ faces, Sansa followed.

* * *

The board was where they’d left it, laid out on the dining table. 

“Think they’re coming?” Sansa whispered, watching Arya’s fingers fidget with the dice. Arya shrugged. 

“They will,” she decided, unconcerned. Nothing ever seemed to bother Arya.

“Arya…” Sansa started, hesitant. “I…thanks, for earlier. You know. With the lion. And the mosquitos.”

“Oh.” Arya looked over at her, genuine surprise on her face. And then, a bit awkwardly, “You, too. With the vines.”

“That was Brienne,” Sansa disassembled, but Arya shook her head. 

“You were trying too,” she insisted. “Sansa, I…”

“What?” Sansa pressed when she didn’t continue. Arya chewed her lip for a moment more, waging some sort of internal argument.

“We’re going to be all right,” she said at last, a rush of words that Sansa couldn’t work out if they were meant to be a statement or question.

“Of course we will,” she said with forced confidence. “We’ve got Jaime, and Brienne. They fought off a _bear_ , Arya.”

“No, I mean, yes, I know, and that was cool,” Arya nodded, her face scrunched up in frustration, and Sansa remembered for the first time in a while just how young her sister really was. “But, I mean…we’ve got to be ok, ok?”

“Ok?” Sansa frowned, lost.

“For Jon,” Arya clarified. “We can’t…we can’t make him the only one left. If something happened to us and then it was just him…that’s not ok.”

Sansa opened her mouth, paused, closed it again. Jon had always been more Arya’s than anyones; the two of them would have been happy together at Uncle Benjen’s, she thought, if not for her. But before she could work out what to say Brienne and Jaime were there, slinking into the room and taking their seats on either side of the table with bashful expressions, each determinedly avoiding the others gaze, and Arya, with a longsuffering sigh, picked up the dice and rolled without further ceremony.

* * *

_**A hunter from the deepest wild, he’ll make you feel just like a child.** _

* * *

“Jaime? Jaime, what is it?!”

Jaime had thrust himself away from the table, backing towards the door with his eyes fixed on the far side of the room, where the vine jungle was starting to break through the wall, pushing aside their temporary barrier like it wasn’t there at all. Brienne was staring at him in worried confusion, all traces of anger gone, but he made no sign of having heard her speak at all.

“Aerys…” Jaime whispered, his face filled with dread

The gunshot cracked through the air and Sansa found herself on the ground underneath Brienne, Arya besides her; the woman had knocked the table to the side and thrown herself on top of them both. A second shot followed the first, and then a figure appeared, slicing through the vines that filled the doorway. He was dressed in old-fashioned khaki, with a safari hat on his head and a long double-bore rifle in his arms. His eyes were fixed on Jaime, and Brienne was staring at him with a look of absolute horror on her face. 

“Get out!” Jaime yelled over to them from where he was crouched behind a dresser. “Brienne, get the girls _out!_ He won’t follow you if I’m still here!”

“Jaime…” Brienne began, objection clear in every inch of her voice and expression, but the hunter drowned her out with a bellow of “BOY!”

“ _Go, Brienne!”_ Jaime repeated, “Go to the woods, I’ll find you there!” And then he was up and running, zig-zagging between the three of them under the table and the encroaching hunter – Aerys, had Jaime called him? - heading towards the door opposite that led deeper into the house. As he’d predicted the hunter instantly swerved to follow him, leaving the way to the hallway and the front door clear. 

“Come on,” Sansa urged, scrambling to her feet and trying to pull Brienne up besides her. “We’ve gotta go!”

“We can’t leave him!” protested Arya, aghast, and though Brienne didn’t say anything Sansa could see her thinking the same. “He’s got a gun!”

“Jaime knows what he’s doing better than the rest of us!” Sansa insisted, scooping up the board and dice and tucking them safely under one arm. “You heard him, he’ll catch up. Come _on!”_

She ran for the entrance way, feet pounding beneath her, and with obvious reluctance Arya followed. There was a long moment during which Brienne stayed, frozen, her gaze torn between the two girls and the direction Jaime had disappeared in, and then, with obvious reluctance, she finally followed after them. 

The gun sounded again, once, twice more as they cleared the front door, but though Brienne flinched she did not turn back.

* * *

Brienne led them to the end of the street, through a little wooden gate and into the trees beyond. The ground sloped up behind the town and the hillside was flanked with wild forest, and it had felt welcoming when Sansa had first seen it; nothing like the woods she’d known back home, but still familiar. Now it just felt foreboding.

“Where are we going?” asked Arya curiously, skipping along besides Brienne with apparent calm. 

“There’s a clearing,” snapped Brienne, and then, remorseful, “It’s a place Jaime and I found, years ago. We used to come up here and play. That’s where he’ll meet us.”

“You were pretty close,” Arya observed with uncharacteristic astuteness; Sansa, mostly too busy concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and not hyperventilating, still found room in a tiny part of herself to be impressed. Arya didn’t _do_ small talk.

“We were,” Brienne confirmed in her slow, steady voice. “He was my best friend.”

“My best friend is Jon,” Arya said lightly. “But he’s my brother too.”

“Your brother? Where is he?”

“He’s not really out brother,” Sansa interrupted sharply before Arya could launch into whatever convoluted lie she was going with this week. “He’s our cousin. Our aunt Lyanna died when he was a baby so he lived with us.”

“Where is he now?” asked Brienne again, still frowning.

“He lives with our uncle Benjen now,” Sansa explained levelly, trying to ignore the scowl on Arya’s face. “Our parents died last year. They were driving our brothers – our actual brothers, Robb and Bran and Rickon – they were driving them, and, well. There was a crash. So now it’s just Arya and me. Uncle Benjen is dad’s brother so Jon went to him, and we came to Aunt Lysa. She’s mum’s sister.”

Brienne’s eyes were wide and sympathetic as she looked between them.

“I saw about that crash in the news,” she murmured, half to herself. “That’s why I recognised your names. I’m sorry.”

Sansa shrugged awkwardly, but Brienne was like Jaime; she spoke like she really was sorry, with them not for them, and with no pressure to fill the silence beyond. Sansa had found early on that it was better to tell the whole story quickly and simply, get it over with in one clean break, accept the awkward platitudes that followed and move on. Neither Jaime nor Brienne were like that. 

But then she thought about Jaime, stuck in some dark jungle on his own for twenty-six years, and Brienne in her echoing house with her lost father, and the way they’d both flinched when Jaime’s voice had cracked on “ _alone”._ Maybe you had to know that sort of loss yourself to understand it in other people. 

“Jon’s our actual brother too,” Arya muttered sullenly, interrupting Sansa’s thoughts, and Sansa sighed, gearing herself up for the argument they’d rehashed too many times before. Whether Brienne recognised the warning signs of whether she just had exceptionally good timing Sansa never worked out, but she chose that exact moment to come to a sudden halt.

“We’re here,”

 _Here_ was a small clearing, flanked on three sides by trees and the fourth by a stony rockface that rose up above their heads. It was shadowed now by the setting sun and carpeted with rough grass and dead leaves, and it didn’t look like much of anything to Sansa, but Brienne was staring round like it was a paradise. 

Brienne was twitchy as they set up a makeshift camp, gathering wood for a fire and never straying far from either of them. Every small noise made her jump and look anxiously through the trees back the way they had come, and as time wore on she gave up on all pretence of calm and began to pace the edges of the clearing, drumming her fingers along the hilt of her stolen sword. Three times Sansa was sure she was about to announce her intention to go back and look for Jaime only to swallow to words. 

Finally they heard the sound of footsteps approaching through the undergrowth; Brienne pulled Sansa and Arya behind her, peering through the gloom with the sword held in a firm grip, but the figure that emerged into the clearing was familiar.

“Jaime!” cried Arya, ducking under Brienne’s arm to run over to the man and give him a short but genuine embrace. “Did you kill him?”

“No,” said Jaime shortly, but he returned her hug with surprised pleasure even as his gaze travelled from Brienne to Sansa and back again. “But he won’t leave the house to follow us up here. Everyone ok?”

“We’re fine,” Sansa said, trying to sound reassuring. 

“Jaime…” Brienne began, finally letting the sword drop, but Jaime cut her off with a shake of his head.

“I bought food,” he said instead, dropping the bundle he carried besides the pile of logs they had gathered. 

“And matches?” asked Brienne hopefully, but Jaime grinned. 

“Didn’t have matches in the jungle,” he pointed out wryly, crouching down beside their little pile of logs. Within minutes there was a cheerful blaze crackling away and the air was filled with the smell of woodsmoke.

“Teach me,” insisted Arya, her eyes wide and gaze rapt. Jaime laughed at her obvious delight. 

“If you like,” he agreed amiably, with an odd, slightly uncertain look in Brienne’s direction.

“I know you probably want to get it over with,” he continued after a slight pause. “But I don’t think we should risk another turn out here, not with it getting dark. It’s too dangerous.”

“I agree,” Brienne said at once, and Sansa only realised how tight Jaime’s shoulders had been when they relaxed at her words. “We’ll spend the night here, and start fresh in the morning.” She glanced at Sansa. “Do you have a way to get in touch with your aunt? She can’t go back to the house.”

“I don’t think she will,” said Sansa slowly, picturing her aunt’s reaction to the chaos in town. “She’ll want to get Robin – he’s our cousin – she’ll want to get him away first. She’s very protective.”

“Won’t she be looking for you two?” Brienne asked, and her horrified expression only deepened at Sansa’s non-committal shrug.

“She won’t,” Arya said, because she was stubborn, sure, but she was smart too.

Brienne’s mouth opened, obviously ready to argue some more, but she stilled when Jaime touched her arm.

“Leave it, Brienne,” he murmured, eyes on Sansa. “Leave it.”

And, thankfully, she did.

* * *

There was something oddly domestic about the evening. Sansa cooked the sausages Jaime had brought – “I didn’t steal them!” he’d insisted at Brienne’s raised eyebrow, though he’d also refused to elaborate on where they’d come from instead – over the small fire while Brienne used the plastic wrappers they had come in to make a make-shift pail and went hunting for water. Jaime, diligently teaching Arya how to light fire without matches as promised, was tense and snappish the entire time she was gone; he only relaxed when the steady, even tread of her boots announced her return. 

It was a messy meal. They ate bread and sausages with their fingers and drank stream water from the plastic wrapper cups, but somehow Sansa felt more at home in the middle of a strange wood with two adults she’d only met that day than she had in all the months of uneasy silent dinners in Aunt Lysa’s austere dining room with Cousin Robin’s wheezy snigger. 

Dad had liked taking them all camping. He’d probably like Brienne and Jaime too, she thought. 

“We should do this again,” commented Arya once they’d finished the sausages and washed them down with berries Jaime had found and solemnly promised weren’t poisonous. “But with Jon. And without the bear.”

“Aunt Lysa won’t camp,” Sansa foresaw glumly, and Arya’s face twisted in a frown. “And she wouldn’t want us to go on our own with Jon.” 

“Brienne and Jaime can bring us,” pointed out Arya brightly, and then, turning to stare up at the two adults, “You will, won’t you?”

“Of course,” promised Jaime with a sharp look in Brienne’s direction. “And your brother too, if he wants to.”

“He will,” confirmed Arya, easily sated, but though she didn’t see the troubled look on Brienne’s face, Sansa did. 

After dinner Jaime taught them how to set traps and trip wires around the camp, to warn of approaching danger. Arya was in her element and even Sansa had to admit it was fun, but Brienne watched him with sad, anxious eyes. 

“Did you do that every night?” she asked quietly later. The moon was up, casting a pale light over the clearing; at Sansa’s side Arya slept deeply, the two of them burrowed under Brienne’s coat. Sansa herself had been nodding off when Brienne’s voice had jerked her back to wakefulness. The two adults were huddled together by the fire, Jaime dabbing gingerly at Brienne’s wounds from the bear with a paste made from leaves he’d sworn were antiseptic. Their arguments from earlier had apparently been forgotten, or at least set aside, for now.

“Not every night,” Jaime deflected. His voice was soft but it carried clearly in the quiet night air. If she tilted her head slightly Sansa could just make the two of them out, silhouetted against the fire. She could probably touch them, if she reached out. It was a comforting thought. “I had a few more permeant bases, over the years. They had traps set up all the time.”

“Jaime…”

“I’m ok,” he said firmly. “See? I’m here, and I’m ok.”

“Your hand…”

“It was a long time ago. And I learnt from the mistake.”

“What happened?”

Silence again, save the fire and the occasional call of a night bird. 

“I cut it off,” Jaime said quietly into the flames. “I was bitten, and it turned septic. No antibiotics, because, well, jungle, obviously, so. I knew I either cut it off or I died.”

Sansa pressed her hand firmly against her mouth to silence her cry of horror. Brienne didn’t. 

“Hey, it’s ok,” said Jaime hurriedly, laying his stump on Brienne’s knee with an anxious glance to where the sisters lay. “Like I said, it was ages ago. And I learnt.”

He poked her shoulder with the sticky leaf residue, gentle but pointed.

“Jaime, you cut off your own _hand.”_

“And I survived,” he reminded her. “I survived, and I’m out now, and I’m safe. Mostly safe, anyway.”

“That man with the gun, Jaime, he…was that…”

“Aerys. He’s just one thing on a long list of dangers that live in that place,” Jaime said firmly with a hard edge to his voice.

“Jaime, he looked just like your _father…”_ Brienne hissed.

“I am aware.” Jaime snapped shortly. “He always has. He isn’t, obviously, but there are…similarities.”

“Your father died, about a decade ago,” Brienne said gently, and even squinting Sansa couldn't make out two separate figures anymore; Jaime had finished with his ministrations to Brienne’s shoulder and now they sat pressed so close together that not a sliver of air passed between them. 

“I know,” Jaime said heavily. “I knew the minute Arya and Sansa weren’t Lannisters. There was no other way he’d leave that house.”

“He wasn’t happy there, after you disappeared.”

“Brienne, my father hadn’t been happy for years before I vanished, you can’t put that one on me too.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Pause. “I know. I’m sorry.”

There was another silence, filled only with the pop and crackle of the fire and the occasional call of a night bird.

“How’s your shoulder?” Jaime asked in a gentle voice.

“Fine,” Brienne said shortly. “The paste helps. Thanks.” 

Jaime hmmed, sounding unconvinced, but he didn’t push.

“I did try, you know,” Brienne continued after another short silence. 

“Try what?”

“To come after you. I kept trying to sneak back to the house to find the game. Tyrion even helped, at first. But then your dad said he’d destroyed it, and I thought…that was it. I should have known better than to believe him.”

“No, Brienne,” Jaime’s voice was gentler that Sansa had heard him all day, even when he’d been talking to them about their parents. “I know. I didn’t mean what I said before. I always knew you’d be trying. You were the bravest person I knew. Why do you think I worked so hard at staying alive? I knew you’d be out there somewhere, trying to find a way to get me back. I just needed to wait for you to figure out how to do it.”

“And I failed.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Thanks to Arya and Sansa.”

Sansa could just make out Jaime’s head twisting round to glance in their direction and she squeezed her eyes briefly, tightly shut. She thought he might try and argue with Brienne further, but in the end he allowed her the deflection.

“Well, their aunt did buy my old house. Luck was a big part in that, it turns out.”

“Not lucky for them,” Brienne pointed out gloomily, and Jaime sighed heavily. 

“No, not for them,” he agreed.

“Their whole family…”

“There’s this aunt.,,,”

“Who sounds awful.”

“…and the brother-cousin.”

“Who they’re not allowed to see.”

“Come on Brienne, families are complicated. I know that better than anyone, even before I spent twenty-six years trapped inside a board game.”

“They’re so sad, Jaime, you must see it. We shouldn’t…we can’t make them promises we can’t keep.”

“Who said anything about breaking promises? We all live through tomorrow and the feral child wants to go camping, I’ll take her camping.”

“Still the same Jaime,” sighed Brienne, but for all that she sounded tired, Sansa could hear the smile in her voice too. “Saving the world, one sad child at a time.”

“You were never a sad child,” Jaime snorted. “That was me. _You_ were the one always trying to save the world.”

“For all the good it did me.”

“I don’t know, I’ve had some pretty low points in the last couple of decades, and every time all I’ve needed to do is close my eyes and just picture the look on Ron Connington’s face…how did his nose turn out, in the end?”

Brienne guffawed loudly in surprise and by Sansa’s side Arya mumbled and turned over in her sleep. The two adults stayed still and silent for a moment, watching, but when there was no more movement Brienne spoke again, her voice hushed but edged with laughter.

“It was still crooked, last I saw. He married one of the Stokeworth sisters in the end, they moved away years back.”

“Ron Connington and a _Stokeworth?”_ gaped Jaime incredulously. “That’s _horrific.”_

“There was some triangle thing going on between them and Bronn Black, after you were gone,” confirmed Brienne, mirthful. “Final year of school got…weird.”

“ _Bronn,”_ shuddered Jaime. “I don’t believe you. What about Renly Baratheon? Please tell me you got over that.”

“Gay,” said Brienne succinctly, and it was Jaime’s turn to choke down a laugh.

“I knew it!” he crowed, delighted, and then, with an anxious glance in Sansa and Arya’s direction, more quietly, “I knew it! Didn’t I tell you!”

“You know, it was almost worth the twenty-six of you being gone, to not have to listen to your I-told-you-sos about Renly Baratheon,” panned Brienne, with humour so dry Sansa almost missed it completely. 

“And it was almost worth twenty-six living in a jungle and _cutting off my own hand_ to be able to come back and say it,” Jaime countered in obvious delight. “Brilliant. Tell me more. What about the Tyrell twins?”

The gentle rise and fall of their voices continued, seeping through the peaceful clearing and lulling Sansa at last into a deep and surprisingly restful sleep. 

* * *

She was the first awake the next morning, the early sun hitting her eyes and dragging her unceremoniously to wakefulness. She slipped out from besides Arya and looked over to the other side of the fireplace.

Brienne and Jaime were curled up together, Jaime’s jacket slung over both of them. Their legs were tangled together, Brienne’s arm curled protectively around Jaime’s waist, as if she’d worried he might vanish again while she slept if she didn’t keep a firm hold, and Jaime’s head was pillowed against her shoulder. It was a startingly intimate sight given that they were both fully-clothed; Sansa blushed and ducked her head and walked with a heavier than usual tread towards the edge of the clearing to find a tree to pee behind. By the time she returned they were both awake and studiously ignoring each other’s gaze again, and Sansa sighed to herself and set about bullying Brienne into letting her check her shoulder.

* * *

After a breakfast of cold sausages, the four of them sat around the wooden box on the forest floor and stared down at the board. Sansa held the dice steadily; it seemed less intimidating, somehow, in the fresh light of day, with the peaceful forest around them and the reassuring presence of Brienne and Jaime on either side of her. 

Holding her breath, Sansa held out one hand and tipped her palm.

* * *

**_You better run, that isn’t thunder. Staying put would be a blunder._ **

* * *

It was Jaime who saved them, again. Sansa and Brienne were still peering at the words with pursed lips while Arya looked around, squinting through the trees, but Jaime climbed to his feet with a slow and dreadful purpose and stood, stock-still, listening. 

“What…” Arya began, but Jaime was moving before she could finish the word.

“Stampede!” he yelled, rushing over to swing Arya up into his arms. “Up! Get up!”

He took off almost before Sansa had time to realise what he was saying, and next thing she knew Brienne had lifted her up too, flinging her over her shoulder like she weighed no more than Rickon.

“The game!” Sansa yelled and Brienne stooped, gathering it up with her free arm and thrusting it into Sansa’s hands before taking off after Jaime.

They scrambled up the rocky cliff face behind the campsite, Sansa clinging desperately to Brienne’s back with one hand and the game with the other. There was a small ledge about halfway up and there they found Jaime and Arya already perched – and how Jaime had made the climb, one-handed and with Arya hanging off him like a limpet, Sansa would never know.

“Stay low,” snapped Jaime from where he was crouched down on the shaking ground. Brienne let Sansa drop to the floor and then threw herself down besides them, the two adults as ever flanking them even as the thunderous noise grew yet louder.

“Don’t look!” bellowed Jaime somewhere above her head, but Sansa couldn’t not; she craned her neck, peering through the dust to gaze down at the ravine below where they had been sitting not moments before.

The stampede was an endless mass of animals, bellowing, trumpeting, panicking as they ran blindly forward. The air was thick with dust and the smell of terrified mammal flesh, every sense overwhelmed by the sheer force of the charge. It seemed to go on forever, but when the swell finally started to ebb mere minutes had passed.

“Ok,” said Jaime, when the shaking ground had stilled and the noise settled to a distant roar. “Ok, it’s gone, they’re gone. We’re all ok.”

Sansa couldn’t tell if he was trying to reassure them or himself.

“Gone _where_?” whispered Arya, looking, finally, a little bit shaken as she peered through the ruined forest down the path the stampede had taken.

“Not our problem right now,” Jaime said grimly. “We finish the game, it will be like they were never here. Right?”

“Right,” agreed Sansa doubtfully, trying not to think about just how much faith they were putting in that one verse. 

“It’s my turn,” said Brienne, frowning down at the board in concentration. “If I get a twelve then I win…”

“Don’t think like that,” admonished Sansa. “One roll at a time.”

“One roll at a time,” agreed Brienne with a wry twist to her mouth. She lifted her hand, ready to roll…and a gunshot echoed through the trees.

“BOY!”

They sprang back in shock, staring up at where the shout had come from. Aerys stood above them, looking down on their little ledge with a manic gleam in his eye. Desperately Sansa scrambled for the cliff edge, ignoring the stone biting into her palm as she started half-climbing, half-sliding down to the ruined forest below.

“I thought you said he wouldn’t follow you out here!” Brienne was yelling somewhere to her right.

“I didn’t think he would!” Jaime replied breathlessly; one-handed, he was struggling more with the descent than the rest of them. “I thought once he got back in that house again he’d never leave it!”

“Jaime, that man is not your father!” Brienne bellowed, but she was drowned out by another gunshot. 

They raced through the trees. There was a thunder roaring in Sansa’s ears; she assumed it was her own pounding heart, or maybe just echoes from the gun shots, and then the ground in front of her suddenly disappeared. 

In town the river was a wide, gently meandering beast, winding along the flat plain towards the sea. Up here it was still a wild thing, leaping from rock to rock to tumble down the hillside in an endless roar. The forest floor dropped away, the sides of the ravine through which the river had carved its path steep and perilously slippy.

“Shit,” gasped Jaime, skidding to a halt besides her. “Shit, shit.”

“This way!” Arya cried, turning to force her way through the thick undergrowth along the top of the bank; Jaime joined her, taking over beating back the bushes to forge a path downstream.

“BOY!” came another cry, and Sansa looked back despite herself. Aerys was still above them, picking his way carefully down the sheer rocky hillside along the river’s edge, but he had the clearer path and he was gaining with every moment. Brienne had stopped a short way back, and now she pulled herself up to her full height, the sword bristling in her hand, and as the hunter paused and raised his rifle to take aim, she drew back her arm and flung the blade towards him. 

It spun through the air, glinting in the morning sun, and it shouldn’t have flown straight, there was no way something that shape should have flown so straight, but it did, catching the hunter in the shoulder with the full force of Brienne’s throw behind it. There was a moment when he looked almost surprised to have been met with such opposition, and then he wobbled, teetered, fell…and disappeared into the rushing water below.

“You killed him,” said Arya after a pregnant pause, four sets of eyes staring down at the churning river. There was something close to awe in her voice.

“It was him or us,” Brienne said grimly, though there was a slight tremor to her voice.

“He won’t be dead,” Jaime said, somehow managing to sound both gloomy and reassuring. “I’ve seen him survive worse than that, believe me. It’ll keep him down for a while though.” He reached out and touched Brienne gently on the arm. “Brienne? You ok?”

She jumped at the contact and glared at him. “Fine,” she said shortly. “I’m fine. Let’s go back to the house. At least we know it’s empty now.”

Jaime frowned but didn’t push.

“This way,” he said dubiously, leading them back up the path, the way they had come, and leaving the river to thunder its endless course behind them.

* * *

The house was still standing, but when the front door swung open under Jaime’s hand the interior was unrecognisable. Thick vines clung to every surface, twisting and turning, with enormous leaves hanging low to the ground at every turn. 

“It’s like…” Sansa breathed, gazing around.

“A jungle.” Jaime finished grimly. “Welcome home, I guess.”

Arya flipped the board open on a particularly thick branch of vine under the stairs.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” Brienne said dubiously, eyeing the flora with profound distrust. 

“I grew up in this,” Jaime pointed out wryly. “Out there scares me more. Your turn, Brienne.”

* * *

**_Every month at the quarter moon, there’ll be a monsoon in your lagoon_ **

* * *

“But it’s not a quarter moon!” Sansa protested uselessly as the first drops of rain began to fall around them.

“At least it’s only rain,” pointed out Brienne, pulling Arya closer to her side and tucking her under her coat. “A bit of water never hurt anyone.”

“No, but a lot can kill you,” declared Jaime grimly, scrambling to his feet and gathering up the game. “We need to head to higher ground. Come on.”

As before they followed him trustingly, even as the rain began to pound down. The house was dark, chocked with vegetation and the strange indoor rainclouds, and the warped light from the distant windows cast strange leaping shadows at every turn. They raced for the stairs, the water already around their ankles. A small waterfall was building, pounding down the steps in a ferocious current, and without exchanging a word Jaime grabbed Arya and pulled her onto his back while Brienne took Sansa’s arm in a firm grip, and they started to climb. 

They’d barely made it ten steps up when there was a booming sound and a wall of water crashed down on top of them. 

For a moment all Sansa knew was blinding darkness as the water buffeted her around like a ragdoll; all sense of up or down was knocked out of her along with her breath. Then her head broke through the surface and she sucked in a gasping lungful of air, blinking and paddling desperately to stay afloat. It was impossible - it _should_ have been impossible - but somehow the entire ground floor was filling with water, already deep enough that Sansa's desperately kicking feet couldn't feel the bottom. Somewhere nearby Jaime and Brienne were both yelling, though she couldn’t make out the words, and not far away Arya’s head was bobbing madly, her small body no match for the swirling currents.

“Jaime!” Sansa screamed desperately over the din. “Get Arya!”

Whether he heard her or whether he’d just seen the young girl’s plight for himself Sansa couldn’t tell, but he was swimming in her sister’s direction all the same, surprisingly strong, sure strokes for a man with a missing hand. And then Brienne was there too, paddling an upturned table towards them with astonishing expertise, plucking first Arya and then Sansa up out the water. Jaime was scrambling on behind them and Sansa was just starting to think they were safe when Brienne saw the crocodile.

“Get to the chandelier!” Jaime bellowed, paddling desperately with his good hand in the direction of the enormous ornate crystal light that hung from the hallway ceiling and was now just clear of the waterline. Between them they managed to manoeuvre the impromptu boat close enough that Brienne was able to grab it with an out stretched arm and swing Arya up into it’s metal arms, clear of the water. She thrust Sansa up after her, but as her feet left the table Sansa felt the wooden top sink into the water below; she turned just in time to see Jaime disappear beneath the surface, his limbs locked around the body of the crocodile that had slammed into them.

“Jaime!” Brienne screamed, reaching out desperately with the arm that wasn’t clinging to the chandelier. “ _Jaime!”_

There was a distant popping noise, like an overblown balloon bursting, and suddenly the water started to drop. The swirling currents coalesced into a single river, streaming towards the front doors that must have burst open from the pressure of the water inside. Jaime was below them, somehow free of the reptile and swimming desperately against the current away from it. Sansa scrambled round to the side of the chandelier nearest to him, where Arya was already hanging over the edge, reaching desperately as Brienne tried to scramble up onto the platform with them. Finally, finally, Sansa felt Jaime’s good hand lock around her wrist, and she and Arya clung to him with all their strength until Brienne was there too, to haul him up and out the water to safely. Deprived of it’s prey the crocodile turned tail and disappeared with the receding waters.

The four of them lay in the nest of the chandelier for a moment, dripping wet and panting heavily. Jaime was the first to recover, despite his battle with the crocodile – but then, Sansa supposed, he’d been doing this sort of thing for twenty-six years, not just two days. He swung to the ground with on light feet, and then reached back up as first Sansa and then Arya dropped down into his arms.

“You’re not catching me,” scowled Brienne, which made Jaime laugh for some reason Sansa couldn’t work out, but then Brienne jumped down after them and Jaime _did_ catch her when she stumbled on landing; his hand grabbed her shoulder while his stump wrapped round her waist. 

And, look. In the past eight months Sansa had lost her parents, her brothers, and her home. In the past two _days_ she had been stalked by a lion, a bear, and a madman with a gun. But she had a romantic heart still, and watching Brienne and Jaime cling to each other like they were the last two people on earth made her sigh and smile wistfully. Even if Arya’s eyeroll was so exaggerated it was practically audible.

“Caught you,” Jaime whispered, staring up at Brienne, his face mere inches from hers. Brienne’s throat bobbed as she swallowed, hard, and her hand tightened compulsively around the material of Jaime’s shirt. Sansa’s heart was beating just about fit to burst as Jaime inched ever so slowly forward…

And then Brienne was scrambling backwards so quickly Jaime almost toppled over.

“I’m fine!” she insisted with forced cheer over the distance she had suddenly put between them. “I told you, you didn’t need to!”

And she turned and practically fled the room, wrapping an arm around Arya’s soaking shoulders to usher her away.

Sansa sighed and smiled sympathetically at Jaime, who was staring after Brienne looking a little shell shocked.

“It’s ok,” he said, surprisingly cheerful, when he noticed Sansa’s gaze. “I’m working on it. She did the same thing when I tried to kiss her twenty-six years and a couple of weeks ago.”

“That…does not sound hopeful.” Sansa couldn’t help but observe, but Jaime just shrugged, still smiling. 

“She’s not punched me either time. Believe me, with Brienne, that counts as a victory.”

* * *

They gathered in the attic, an unspoken need to keep the high ground despite the fact that the rain seemed to have stopped. Brienne was looking around at the half-opened boxes of Jaime’s belongings that Sansa and Arya had rifled through – was it really only the day before? 

“It was here, all this time,” she murmured, marvelling, half to herself.

“My dad was a packrat at heart,” shrugged Jaime, still sounding remarkably upbeat. Brienne either didn’t hear or just ignored him; she was staring down into one of the boxes with a strange look on her face.

“This is mine,” she said slowly after a moment, reaching in to pull out a soft blue jumper. Jaime, to Sansa’s considerable delight, blushed. 

“Is it?”

“Yes,” frowned Brienne, turning the warm material over in her hands. “I lost it…years ago.”

“Probably about twenty-six years,” pointed out Arya with a helpful smirk, utterly immune to Jaime’s glare. 

“Just over twenty-six,” agreed Brienne softly, looking up at Jaime in confusion, a hint of a blush staining her cheeks. “Jaime, why is my jumper packed up with all your things?”

Jaime gave a weak smile and a very unconvincing shrug. “Who knows. Twenty-six years, lots has happened, who can remember that long. Pass me the dice, Arya.”

Brienne’s mouth was opening again, ready to argue, but Arya, for once in her life, did as she was told.

* * *

**_Beware the ground on which you stand; the floor is quicker than the sand_ **

* * *

Arya was the quickest; she threw herself at Sansa and the two rolled over backwards into a pile of junk.

“Arya, what…?!” Sansa coughed, clearing the dust from her eyes, but the smaller girl was already up and moving again. 

“Help us Sansa!” she cried, and, scrambling to her feet, Sansa blinked at the scene in front of her. Arya had thrown herself and Sansa clear, but Jaime hadn’t been so lucky. He had disappeared up to his waist into the floorboards, the wood flexing and shifting around him like…like quicksand. Brienne and Arya were darting round the edges, stretching and reaching but unable to get close enough to grab his flailing arms. Desperately Sansa seized a tall wooden floor lamp and thrust it out across the sinking floor; for a brief, glorious moment Jaime held it and Brienne came racing round, ready to help haul him out, but even as her hands closed around the smooth wood the shaft broke apart, leaving them each clutching separate useless halves. Arya had grabbed the trombone she had mocked the day before but that too met a similar fate, falling apart as Jaime seized one end and Arya pulled desperately on the other.

“Stop giving me things that come apart!” Jaime yelled desperately. He was up to his neck now, hand and stump still waving desperately but the rest of him almost completely gone. Brienne had ripped the door off an old wardrobe and was laying it across the molten floor towards him, crawling gingerly forwards, when Sansa was struck with a flash of inspiration.

“Arya, roll!” she yelled. Arya stared at her for a beat, confusion all over her face, and then it cleared and she was grabbing for the dice, letting them fall with a careless clatter.

* * *

**_There is a lesson you will learn: sometimes you must go back a turn_ **

* * *

The horrible slurping noise from the shifting floorboards fell blissfully silent. 

“Thank you, Sansa, Arya” came Jaime’s voice, strangely muffled. “That was very quick thinking. But Brienne and I would like to get out of the floor now, please.”

Sansa stared down at them across the blissfully solid ground. All that was left to see of Jaime was his upturned face and his forearms, reaching up through the floor towards Brienne. Brienne was almost on top of him, her own arms disappearing down into the wood where she’d obviously been trying to grasp him to lift him out. It was a parody of a lovers embrace, both of them frozen, stuck in the moment before they would have touched. 

“Are you alright?” Brienne murmured. Jaime’s hand twitched towards her, stroking along the small stretch of her shoulder that he could reach. 

“Never better,” he assured her with a half-grimace that would probably have been a smile if half his facial muscles hadn’t been frozen by the floor. Brienne shuffled awkwardly, leaning into the touch. “You’ve got to stop trying to save me.”

“Never,” she confessed quietly into the space between their faces, her voice small and uncertain; Sansa found herself straining to hear. “I couldn’t bear it if I’d lost you again,”

“I’m not that easy to lose,” Jaime disassembled and Brienne snorted, a watery noise like she was holding back on tears. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

“Sansa,” Arya hissed, glaring. “Stop eavesdropping. It’s your turn.”

Sansa felt herself flush, but if either Brienne or Jaime heard Arya’s accusation they showed no sign of it. They were still staring at each other, Jaime’s fingers reaching out to brush the tips lightly along Brienne’s cheek. 

Sansa sighed, and, reluctantly, rolled.

* * *

**_Need a hand, well you just wait. We’ll help you out, we each have eight._ **

* * *

“This feels like a personal attack,” Jaime grunted, frustration at his own uselessness evident in his voice. 

“Shut _up_ Jaime!” Brienne snapped, twisting her body awkwardly to kick at one of the giant spiders that was skittering close to where she and Jaime were still sandwiched together. 

“I’m just saying, ‘ _need a hand’?!_ Honestly!”

“Jaime!”

Sansa tuned out their bickering, grabbing the pole from broken lamp they’d tried to free Jaime with and using it to swipe at the nearest spider, bitterly missing Brienne's sword. Arya had backed into a corner, and Sansa had forgotten, until right now, because Arya was _Arya,_ bull-headed and adventurous and braver than anyone else Sansa had ever known until Jaime and Brienne had crashed into their lives…and terrified of spiders. 

To be fair, these were spiders to be terrified of. Each one was the size of a dinner plate, with eyes like marbles. They scuttled on legs longer than Sansa’s forearm, making a disconcerting clicking noise on the wooden floor, and every time one got close it would rear back, spitting and lunging with vicious fangs that dripped with venom. 

Sansa slashed wildly with the pole, making a path towards her sister and then desperately clearing the space around them; Arya clung to her side the minute she was close enough, trembling and shaking like she hadn’t since she was a tiny child. Even at the funeral they’d stood apart, islands in their own separate griefs. Aunt Lysa had praised their composure, at the time, and Arya had repaid her for that by disappearing into her room for four days and refusing to see or speak to anyone. Clutching her sister now, Sansa wished she’d tried harder to reach her then. 

Hitting, beating, they made their way back to where Jaime and Brienne lay. Brienne’s legs were doing a fierce job of kicking away any spider that crept too close but their heads were unprotected and so Sansa steeled herself with the stick, hacking and thrashing at any spider that came within reach.

“Brienne needs to roll!” Jaime hollered across the din. “A seven and she wins! Arya, get the board!”

“I can’t hold the dice!” Brienne protested desperately, aiming a hard headbutt at a spider that had snuck past Sansa’s watch and was heading straight for Jaime. 

“In your mouth! Get it, Arya!”

Something in his tone was enough to break through Arya’s terror; she broke away from Sansa’s side and scuttled over to where the game lay. The floorboards creaked as she scooped it up, and Sansa span around at the sound of her sudden soft gasp of surprise. The vines had snaked up through the joists from the room below, one of the giant purple flowers bobbing up through the hole, and Arya was clutching at her neck where a lethal-looking spur was sticking out of her flesh.

“Arya!” Sansa cried in terror, making to throw down the stick and rush to her side.

“I’m fine!” Arya insisted, yanking the spur from her flesh with a wince and hurrying back to Jaime and Brienne with the board in hand. “Concentrate on the spiders!”

She didn’t look fine; already there was a pale sweaty sheen to her skin, and she almost stumbled the last couple of steps back to Brienne, but the spiders were already taking advantage of Sansa’s distraction and so she turned back to them with fresh vengeance.

“Arya, are you ok?!” demanded Brienne urgently, but Arya ignored her, spreading the board out unapologetically over Jaime’s face and thrusting the dice into Brienne’s mouth.

“Roll!” she insisted, though her voice slurred. Sansa kept chopping at the spiders, but a gentle thud made her spin back round to stare in horror as Arya crumpled to the ground.

“Arya!” she cried again, racing to slash at a spider that was making its way towards her sister’s prone form. Brienne’s face was mask of horror as she looked helplessly over at where Arya had fallen, and then spat the dice desperately back out on to the board.

* * *

**_You’re almost there with much at stake, but now the ground begins to quake._ **

* * *

Sansa had pulled Arya half onto her lap, cradling her limply with one arm while the other still grasped the wooden pole, ready to strike at any spiders that came closer to her defenceless sister, but the whole swarm had frozen. Some stood inches from where Jaime and Brienne lay trapped, but even they seemed suddenly disinterested in their defenceless pray. Almost as one the swarm started to retreat, disappearing into the nooks and crannies they had emerged from. Sansa dropped the pole with a clatter and reached up to pat desperately at Arya’s face. Her sister’s eyes were closed and her limbs were twitching uselessly, but she stirred at Sansa’s prodding.

“Sansa?” groaned Arya.

“It’s ok, it’s ok,” Sansa crooned, rocking her gently like their mother had done when any of them were ill as children. “They're gone.”

“Sansa, I want to go home,” Arya’s voice was weak and croaked, and her eyes kept sliding shut.

“I know, Arya, I know, me too,” Sansa said, tears running tracks down her cheek. “Stay awake, Arya. Stay awake and when this is over, we’ll make Aunt Lysa ring Uncle Benjen, and you can go live with him and Jon, like you wanted, ok? But you have to stay awake!”

It wasn’t working; Arya’s eyes were firmly closed now and she kept groaning, clutching at Sansa’s sodden clothes with desperate fingers and burrowing her face into her shirt.

“You too,” she slurred into the warmth of Sana’s belly. “Only if you come too.”

“Of course,” Sansa promised, but Arya’s hands were going lax, her head lolling, and though she was still breathing it was shallow and erratic. “Arya? Arya! Jaime, she won’t wake up!”

Sansa shook her sister’s limp form desperately, looking over to where Jaime and Brienne were both staring back in horror. Her whole body was shaking, with cold, with fear, but it wasn’t just her body, Arya was shaking too, and the floor around them, and the ceiling…

“Earthquake!” yelled Jaime, even as the floor started to buck and crack. Brienne tore herself out of the damaged boards, breaking through the weakened wood like wet paper and clinging on to Jaime with frantic strength. Sansa crawled towards them, dragging Arya with her, trying to escape the cracks that were winding their way across the attic.

Jaime was hanging over the edge of a huge crevasse, the centre of the house split almost completely in two where the earth below had opened up. His good hand was caught in both of Brienne’s while his stump scrabbled uselessly at the edge, unable to make any sort of purchase. 

“Brienne, the game! Get the game!” he cried, as the board, teetering on the brink began to tip.

“I can’t let you go!” she bellowed back, but even as Sansa lunged desperately for it the wooden box slipped from between her fingers and disappeared into the breach. She watched it fall, reaching uselessly, and then Brienne let out an anguished scream, and Sansa turned just in time to see Jaime slide from her grip. He seemed to fall in slow motion, hitting the exposed beams of the floor below with an awful thud and then bouncing off. He grabbed desperately at a length of vine and it ripped away from the wall, so he swung with it, Tarzan-style, but with at least a modicum of control on his fall.

“Jaime, it’s behind you!” bellowed Sansa, spotting the game caught on the edge of the ruined first floor landing, and somehow, somehow, one-handed and soaking wet and exhausted and clinging to the vine, he managed to scoop it up as he swung past it. It cost him his grip and control though and he started to fall again, out of their sight, and then there was nothing but darkness and the distant tinkles of falling glass.

“Go after him!” Brienne yelled, Arya in her arms. “I’ve got Arya, Sansa, go!”

Sansa ran, wrenching the attic door open and flying down the stairs. The house was a ruin, torn clean in two by the quake, but the stairs were still just about passable. She scrambled down to the first floor and then the ground, and there was Jaime, battered and bloodstained but somehow still standing, in the ruin of what had once been the living room. Sansa’s relief overwhelmed her, and so it took her a moment to realise he wasn’t alone.

“What are you holding?” a grim voice barked, and Sansa jerked, looking beyond Jaime to see the figure of the hunter standing in the doorway, gun pointed squarely at Jaime’s chest. “Drop it!”

A funny expression crossed Jaime’s face, a flash of humour at some joke Sansa didn’t get, and then he shrugged languidly and opened his palm. The dice fell to the floor, the first one coming to rest by his foot while the second bounced on and away, slipping down into the abyss that now ran the entire length of the house. 

“End of the line, sonny jim,” gloated Aerys. “Game’s up. Start running.”

“No,” said Jaime softly, a dangerous edge to his voice. His eyes were fixed on the spot where the die had dropped over the edge, and Sansa was holding her breath, straining to listen for the sound of it hitting something, anything below and coming to a stop. Jaime was four away…

She heard Brienne approach behind her, Arya clutched in her arms. The hunter didn’t seem to notice, but Jaime’s eyes flickered, briefly, in their direction.

“Is she…?” Sansa began but didn’t dare finish, as Brienne lay Arya down, propping against the nearest wall. 

“Alive, still.” Brienne said grimly, and Sansa hurried to her sister’s side, picking up one of her hands and rubbing it gently between her own. Brienne’s attention had shifted however, to the stand off happening in the room in front of them.

“Aren’t you afraid?” the hunter was demanding, a mean curl to his lip.

“Terrified,” agreed Jaime, his eyes still fixed on the three of them huddled in the corner. “But I’ve been terrified for twenty-six years. Why change now.”

Aerys' laugh was more a cackle, like the evil witches from the fairy-tale films Sansa had devoured growing up. But Jaime was no lost princess, even if Brienne seemed determined to be his gallant knight.

“Any last words?” the hunter crooned, lifting his gun and sighting down the narrow lens. Brienne was already moving, breaking away from Sansa and Arya, but Jaime didn’t flinch. He was looking down at the board in front of him, a manic smile breaking over his face.

“Jumanji,” he rasped, slowly lifting his head back up to stare at Aerys.

“What?” Aerys demanded.

“Jumanji,” repeated Jaime, and then a third time, stronger, “Jumanji!”

Everything seemed to happen at once. There was an echoing click as Aerys pulled back on his trigger, and a corresponding roar from Brienne as she leapt forward, flinging herself into the space between Jaime and the oncoming bullet. Sansa shrieked, in fear, in warning, but the sound seemed to bend in on itself even as it left her mouth, warping and twisting. The air rang with the mangled sound and Sansa’s vision blurred. A high wind whipped up from nowhere, buffeting her back and forth, and it was like being caught up in the monsoon again. She clutched desperately on to Arya’s hand, her only anchor, and the last thing she saw was the shape of Jaime and Brienne, clinging to one another in front of the fireplace.

And then everything went black.

* * *

_**Jumanji** _

* * *

The roaring had settled to a dull whine by the time Brienne felt safe enough break away from Jaime’s embrace and open her eyes. She blinked at the light, brighter and cleaner than the gloom she’d grown used to, and then she blinked again at Jaime’s face, which was staring down at his own hand in wonder.

His teenage face. Staring down at his right hand. 

She watched, transfixed, as he stretched and flexed the fingers experimentally. She’d forgotten, somehow, in the last twenty-six years, how ridiculous his smile was – his proper smile, the one he never really used at school. It made him look like an excited young boy, and she thought, with a sudden flood of warmth in her belly, how well it would suit his grown-up face too, now he had chance to grow into it again. 

She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t realise his attention had shifted from his hands to her face until he said, “Brienne?” in a careful voice – and she’d forgotten the sound of _that,_ too, the way he’d used to say her name, and it was a whole new rush to hear it again.

“Jaime…” she began, and her voice was different too, higher and smoother than she remembered - had she _really_ ever sounded this young? She sounded like...

And then with a sudden rush she remembered they weren’t alone. “Arya, Sansa!” she cried, spinning round to stare at the corner where she’d left them, Sansa clutching desperately at her sister’s unconscious body.

“They’re gone, Brienne,” said Jaime, laying a gentle hand on her arm. “They don’t even exist yet now.”

“But Arya…” Brienne started to protest, trying to shake the picture of the younger girl’s pale, prone form from her memory.

“Won’t be born for years,” Jaime placated. He held out his hand; in it were clasped the monkey and crocodile tokens that Arya and Sansa had played with. He tipped them gently into Brienne’s palm and folded her fingers over them, keeping his hand on hers once she gripped them. “And then she’ll be fine.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment, letting the words sink in. The game sat on the table besides them, benign. “We need to get rid of this,” she said, glaring at it. “We can’t risk anyone finding it. Them or anyone else.”

“Throw it in the river,” suggested Jaime easily. “Come on. We can check in on your dad at the same time.”

Her dad…Brienne was suddenly blindsided by the realisation that her dad would be at home, whole and healthy and wondering where she’d got to. She had time, time to spend with him and years to bully him into visiting a doctor…but.

“What about you,” she interjected softly. “Don’t you want to go and look for Tyrion? Or your sister?”

Jaime shook his head sharply, though his expression was torn. “Once I see them, I’m not going to want to leave them,” he confessed. “We need to do this first.”

* * *

The walk across town to the bridge near Brienne’s house was surreal. Brienne could feel the years of her old life falling away, growing hazier with every step as the familiarity of her teenage world began to erase the memories of her adult one. 

At the bridge they hauled the bundle of game and rope and rocks over the edge of the low stone wall right in the middle where the current would flow fastest. They watched it disappear beneath the murky surface in silence, and Brienne wasn’t sure which of them had moved, but when they finally turned away from the water to face each other their hands were firmly clasped again. She felt herself flush; she’d forgotten how awful that part of being a teenage girl was, especially one whose best friend was Jaime Lannister. She’d still never stop being thankful for it. 

“I’m starting to forget what it felt like to be a grown up,” she said into the silence between them.

“Me too,” agreed Jaime, an odd note in his voice. “But as long as we don’t forget Arya and Sansa.”

“No,” promised Brienne at once, certain of it. She’d already tucked her memories of the two girls up safe in the back of her mind, with her mother and brother. Ready to be brought out in years to come. “We’ll see them again one day. You owe Arya a camping trip.”

Jaime laughed at that, easy and free, and Brienne’s stomach lurched again. Maybe something of it showed on her face, or maybe Jaime just knew her too well, because his expression softened and he reached up, tentative, to stroke her cheek with his right hand. She had a brief flash of the memory of the roughness of his stump doing the same thing when they’d been trapped in the floorboards, and she tucked that memory away too, a treasure to keep. 

“Brienne,” Jaime was saying, awkward but determined. “I…there’s something I’ve been wanting to do for months, here, and also for about twenty-six years, there, and I want to do it now for both of me, before I forget the old one.”

Brienne’s pulse was thrumming in her ears, her eyes fixed on Jaime’s mouth as he spoke, and later she couldn’t remember if she said yes or just nodded or if Jaime just read her mind like he seemed to sometimes, but either way he was leaning forward, inch by careful inch, reaching up to catch her lips in a gentle kiss.

It was short, sweet, and when they broke slowly apart Jaime’s face stayed close, his breath warm on her tingling lips. 

“Ok?” he whispered, watching her face carefully – always watching her, even now, even before he’d spent twenty-six years fighting for his own life and two days fighting for hers. How had she never noticed that before?

“Ok,” she confirmed, brushing his lips with hers again, bold. He was smiling as she drew back, pleased with himself and with her, and she could see that old Jaime Lannister confidence starting to settle around his shoulders again. She grinned. “I’m still going to want my blue jumper back though.”

Jaime threw back his head, laughing again.

“No,” he said gaily.

“I’m bigger than you!” she protested weakly, and he grinned up at her wickedly.

“Brienne, you’re _always_ going to be taller than me,” he reminded her delightedly. She sighed, but she was smiling too; she couldn’t stop. She looked down at their linked hands, twisting her palm experimentally in his, testing the grip. 

“That’s how I knew,” she commented, half to herself; she didn’t realise she’d spoken out loud until she noticed Jaime looking at her inquisitively.

“Before. Yesterday. Whenever it was,” she frowned, trying to parse the tenses and giving up. “When you turned up on my doorstep. I thought I’d finally cracked, like everyone had always said I would…”

Jaime was frowning at her now, but she hushed his protest and continued.

“No, I did. But then…you touched me, and I could feel your grip on my skin, and…I’ve doubted my mind, Jaime, you can have no idea how many times I’ve questioned my own mind. But never my body. You touched me, and I just…knew.”

Jaime smile was a gentle, tender thing; a new one she’d never seen before, and one she intended to horde, just for her. 

“I knew you the moment I saw you,” he confessed softly. “But I couldn’t believe it until I’d touched you, too.”

He lifted their still-linked hands to his lips, pressing a quick kiss to her knuckles, and then, laughing and lightly teasing, they walked from the bridge back towards the houses where their families waited.

* * *

**_Twenty-six ish years later_ **

* * *

The party was in full swing. Festive decorations hung from every surface and the air was filled with the clamour of warm conversation. Brienne’s colleagues were a nice enough bunch, on the whole, but Jaime was struggling to pay any attention to them. He should have been learning their names, making small talk and generally schmoozing; he _could_ have been mulling over the phone call from Cersei he’d taken just before they left the house, his sister ranting about their father’s latest exploits as if she didn’t love every minute of being his righthand woman; he could _even_ have been admiring his wife’s figure, her work-party-appropriate attire doing nothing to disguise her expanding midriff, because both of them had sworn no more after the last one and then promptly ignored their own decision. 

But he was doing none of those things. 

“Jaime, stop fidgeting,” Brienne hissed out the side of her mouth. 

“But they’re here!” he protested weakly. Brienne had been stubbornly stern for the last twelve years - the past twenty-six years, really – muttering dire warnings about timelines and butterflies and all sorts of nonsense, like any science fiction anywhere could give them any guidance on how to deal with memories of a pocket universe created by a psychotic game to trap them in a nightmare. But six months ago Catelyn Stark’s company had advertised for new staff and hired one vastly over-qualified Brienne, and tonight, finally, finally…

“Brienne!” came a delighted cry and they turned as one to see a tall woman with Sansa’s red hair and Arya’s smile bearing down on them. “Brienne, I’m so glad you made it. Ned, this is Brienne, I’ve told you about her.”

Ned was a burly man with a thatch of thick dark hair; Jaime scanned his face anxiously as Brienne returned the introductions, looking for some hint of familiarity, but there wasn’t one. 

Until he laughed, and Jaime heard in it the echo of Arya’s delighted chuckle from twenty-six years away.

Under the cover of their linked arms, Brienne pinched him. He should probably be paying more attention.

“Delighted,” he fumbled, reaching out to shake Ned’s proffered hand with his own, grinning to himself at the memory of Sansa’s face when she’d tried to shake his stump. 

“Did you bring the children?” Catelyn was asking, looking around. “Robb and Jon, our eldest and our nephew, are setting up some party games for the younger ones out back.”

“We got a babysitter,” Brienne disassembled. “They’re with my dad tonight.”

“We’re looking forward to meeting your children though,” Jaime chimed in. He thought he’d struck the right tone between politeness and genuine interest, but from the odd looks the Starks sent him and the way Brienne pinched his arm again, it was possible he’d overshot straight into creepy. Oops. 

Never mind. What was he supposed to say? _Oh yes, in an alternative reality where you’re both dead, your daughters actually saved my life, and now we’re both really, really excited to see them again?_ That wasn’t exactly the first impression he wanted to strike with his wife’s boss.

“Of course,” said Catelyn, still eyeing him a little uncertainly but obviously trusting Brienne enough to know she wouldn’t have married a complete lunatic. Sensible woman. “The boys are all out back, but I think the girls are around somewhere…Ned?” Ned was already looking round obligingly as Catelyn turned back to Brienne. “Oh, Brienne, that reminds me! Do you think there’s any chance of moving the Parrish meeting next week? It’s somehow been double-booked; I’m meant to be off that afternoon so we can take the boys…”

“No!” snapped Brienne and Jaime fiercely, making everyone jump. Catelyn stared at them both in surprise, and Brienne blushed.

“Sorry,” she said. “I mean, no, we can’t. I already tried. It’s fixed, they’re very inflexible about it. It’s that day or nothing. Aren’t they?” She glanced over at Jaime, a desperate look in her eye.

“Completely,” he nodded confidently. “Brienne’s been telling me all about them, how unhelpful they are. That day or never. Madness. No way to run a business.”

“Ok…” said Catelyn slowly, still looking between them but obviously deciding not to peer any further down that rabbit hold. “That’s fine, it is what it is. We can reschedule our plans instead, it’s nothing important.”

“What’s nothing important?” piped up a new voice, and Jaime’s heart leapt in his chest as he caught sight of the approaching newcomers. 

“Brienne, Jaime,” said Ned’s gravelly voice, “these are our daughters. Arya, Sansa, Brienne works with your mother.”

Besides him, Brienne let out a gusty sigh. Jaime stared down at the two girls, raking his eyes from one to the other. They looked the same, on the outside, Sansa maybe a bit taller than he’d remembered, Arya’s hair a shade darker, but at the same time…he remembered the two girls he’d met on that dusty landing, a lifetime and a universe ago. Sansa trying so desperately to hide her tender heart, Ayra ready to throw herself at anything and everything so long as it meant she didn’t have time to _think,_ both of them so utterly determined to help a strange man in need and put right their perceived wrongs.

They weren’t the same. There was something missing, a tension coiled so tight in both of them that he hadn’t even realised they had carried it until he saw them now, free. It made him want to weep with gladness.

They’d been staring too long, he and Brienne both; Ned and Catelyn were shooting them odd looks again. But Jaime couldn’t find it in himself to care about them right now.

“Hello,” said Arya, practically vibrating with supressed excitement – but that didn’t mean anything, Jaime had seen her react in almost exactly the same way to cold sausages for breakfast, for all he knew she’d just eaten a particularly good piece of buffet food.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Sansa added, holding out her hand like a businessman striking a deal. Jaime clasped it firmly; she was grinning widely, like she was remembering some long-ago secret joke, and then she looked up to meet his gaze.

And winked.

**Author's Note:**

> Two headcanons I desperately wanted to include somewhere in here but could never quite find room for:
> 
> 1) Sansa was considered old enough by Social Services to have a say in whether she and Arya went to Lysa or Benjen after their parents' deaths in the game timeline. She chose Lysa, based on her gender and perceived lifestyle, and has lived with the secret guilt of that choice ever since.
> 
> 2) Arya has a watch that Jon gifted her; a heavy-duty one too big for her little wrists, waterproof and shatterproof with a compass on the dial. It is her proudest possession.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
